Audrey Flack & Bill De Kooning in his Easthampton Studio

CREDO

I believe in art.
I do not believe in the “Art World” as it is today.
I do not believe in art as a commodity.

Great art is in exquisite balance.
It is Restorative.

I believe in the Energy of art,
and through the use of that energy,
the artists ability to transform his or her life,
and by example, the lives of others.

I believe that through our art,
and through the projection
of transcended imagery,
we can mend and heal the planet.

- From Commencement address at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, May 1974

Audrey Flack is an internationally acclaimed painter, sculptor, and a pioneer of photorealism. Ms. Flack enjoys the distinction of being the first Photorealist painter whose work was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection. Among many major museums around the world, her work also resides in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Butler Institute of American Art, National Gallery of Australia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum. Additionally, she is the first woman artist, along with Mary Cassatt, to be included in Janson’s History of Art text.

Among her public commissions are Monumental Gateway to the City of Rock Hill in South Carolina, consisting of four twenty-foot high bronze figures on granite pedestals; Veritas et Justitia, a fifteen foot high figure of Justice for the Thirteenth Judicial Courthouse in Tampa, Florida; and Islandia, a nine-foot high bronze sculpture for the New York City Technical College in Brooklyn, New York. A major retrospective of her work organized by the J.B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky has traveled to museums around the country beginning in 1992.

Audrey Flack has taught and lectured extensively both nationally and internationally. She was awarded the Augustus St. Gaudens Medal from Cooper Union, was an honorary Albert Dorne Professor at Bridgeport University, and awarded an honorary professorship at George Washington University. There are numerous books on her work, including Breaking the Rules: Audrey Flack, a Retrospective, 1950-1990 by Thalia Gouma Peterson, published by the Abrams Publishing Company in New York. Audrey Flack is the author of three books, On Painting (Abrams 1986), The Daily Muse (Abrams 1989), and Art & Soul (Penguin USA 1991). She is currently in the process of writing a sequel to Art & Soul, as well as a memoir.

Ms. Flack earned a Graduate Certificate in Fine Arts from the Cooper Union in 1951. She also received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Yale University and attended New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. In May of 2015 she received an honorary Doctorate degree to Clarke University. Currently Audrey Flack lives and works both in East Hampton and in New York City.

Audrey Flack

Audrey Flack

Art is a calling. Artists are not discovered in school. Artists do not just paint for themselves, and they don’t simply paint for an audience. They paint because they have to. There is something within the artist that has to be expressed . Every creation reveals something more about the universe and about the artist.
— Audrey Flack from Art & Soul Notes on Creating

The Photorealists, 1970’s (Audrey is in the second row between Richard Estes and Charlie Bell)

The Photorealists, 1970’s (Audrey is in the second row between Richard Estes and Charlie Bell)