Frank Emrick’s Art Education

 My art education started pre kindergarten watching my father duplicate Popeye cartoons from the comic section of the newspaper. Seemed like a good way to start. During High School my education continued with Saturday art classes at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois. I also studied with Ed Nicholson, a full time fine artist and portrait painter.
As a high school senior I won one of 63 National Scholastic Awards Competition scholarships in 1948. Frank Young Sr., the president of The American Academy of Art in Chicago, was one of the 3 judges of the competition and chose me for his school. I took all the drawing/painting classes I could in the two years I attended. It included 1-1/2 years under the tutelage of Bill Mosby. I likened it to acquiring an extensive vocabulary. The better a person’s vocabulary, the better one can express one’s self verbally. The more advanced one’s artistic skills, the more eloquent a statement one can make visually.
Therefore my art is “representational”...a language anyone can understand. I am still learning how to speak it.
After art school in 1950, I entered the world of commercial art (graphic art now days) and during the next 19 years became proficient in design, production, illustration and photo retouching at several ad agencies and art studios in Illinois and Wisconsin. That “eating” thing.
In 1969, I started my own business as Emrick & Associates and in 1976, I became one of the founders of Ads Infinitum, an advertising agency. My main function was as Account Executive, advising clients on how to spend their money for advertising. I also was the source for the creative content and copy writing for my accounts. In sixteen years our agency won more than 100 awards for excellence in advertising. Also learned more about manure handling equipment and the reproductive anatomy of cows than you can work into most conversations.
In 1991, I bought my first Macintosh. The computer has proven to be a powerful new “medium” for the graphic and fine artist. I still do sales literature for a tillage farm account as a graphic artist. I also use the computer for preliminary composition and planning for my “fine art” efforts.
In 1992, I “retired” from ad biz to pursue a more leisurely lifestyle and to devote more time to painting and the fine arts. While the leisure phase has dominated my life since then, I have been devoting more and more time to fine art and attending workshops by Wende Caporale, Ramon Kelly, Judith Carducci and Stephen Pan.
My art competition efforts have been limited to a local Secura Insurance Co. annual competition where I won “Best of Show” in 1999, for “Raise You a Dime”, a painting of a deer hunting poker game, and several Honorable Mention awards in other years plus being juried into the 2005 Oil Painters of America National show at the Hilligoss Galleries in Chicago for a portrait, painting titled, “Been There, Done That”. Still life & figure paintings were juried into the first three Richeson 75 competions in 2007. My picture "Reincarnation" has been juried into the 2008 OPA Eastern Regional exhibit at the Richland Gallery in Nashville from Oct. 17 - Nov. 15. It has been awarded a $500 Award of Excelence.