Ross Franzi

Australian wildlife painter Ross Franzi’s formative experiences are nearly as complexly layered as his hyperrealist pastorals. His father, a professional photographer, and art teacher Vikki Harvey cultivated his multifaceted understanding of art, reflected in the composition and style of Franzi’s paintings of animals in wild and farmland settings. After suffering an injury in the Royal Australian Air Force he turned to art for its therapeutic benefits, a gift he now shares with his art students.

Franzi’s ability to teach and aid understanding is implicitly present in each of his works, which train viewers’ eyes to different ways of seeing and looking at nature. He creates a visual vocabulary with meticulous, lushly colorful symbols, sceneries and characters rendered with a mix of acrylic and gouache paints. The resulting aesthetic nears magical realism, revealing a delicate, fleeting field of beings, activities and objects parallel to our own. Franzi’s environmentalism pervades his rural wildlife scenes, imbuing his sensibility for nature’s subtleties with an endearing sense of community.