Artist’s Statement

My paintings combine my love of character design, fantasy, and cartoon-style graphics with my background as a botanical illustrator, naturalist and country-boy.

The works are about the wonder of nature, the beauty that is to be found among the unusual, overlooked, and unconventionally beautiful life-forms.

Artist’s Bio

I was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1970, moved to Northern California in 1976, and grew up in the countryside of Western Sonoma County in an world of apple trees, redwood forests, fantasy, cartoons, dolls, and counterculture. I graduated from Analy High School in Sebastopol in 1988.

I went back to SoCal to study at Pomona College, where I illustrated for the college newspaper and earned a BA in History with concentrations on medieval Europe and pre-modern Japan. in 1992. A semester abroad in Java, Indonesia and further travels through SE Asia really hooked me on the exotic and the tropics. I took my first plant taxonomy course towards the end of my undergrad years and fell in love with the science of plant identification the new view of the world that the study of evolutionary history/taxonomy gave to me.

After college I continued to combine my interests in art and botany, working at an ornamental plant seed company, illustrating plants for a scientific institute in Costa Rica, some grad school in botany, working in San Francisco as a programmer, illustrator, animator and developer in the multimedia-web industry, and ultimately producing and licensing my own ‘interactive cartoons’ via yukyuk.com

In 1999, I moved back to rural Western Sonoma County  where I continue to press my drawings into service, sometimes as digital or stained glass art, but mostly as paintings.  My local setting is a constant inspiration to me as are the tropical forests of Costa Rica, where I continue to spend a lot of time now that I have family ties down there.

Chad Frick | Santa Rosa