Frank Trefny
Biography

Frank Trefny was born in 1948 in Greenwich, Connecticut and has lived in Delaware since 1983. He received his B.F.A. from Syracuse University in 1970 and his M.F.A. in 1974 from the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute, College of Art studying under esteemed local artists Grace Hartigan and Raoul Middleman. Trefny has participated in numerous museum and gallery exhibitions over the past forty-five years across the United States, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic region.

His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Delaware Art Museum, Noyes Museum, New Jersey, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, and several additional museum venues. His work is represented in numerous major corporate and private collections. Trefny was the cover artist and the subject of a feature article in American Artist magazine in December 1987 as well as October 2009. He was selected as the cover artist for Reader's Digest in April 1995. Steven Scott Gallery has included the artist in over one hundred group exhibitions at the gallery since 1988. We have exclusively represented the artist in the region since our opening in 1988 and exhibited his tenth solo show of new paintings with the gallery in 2016.

Frank Trefny: A Painter's Painter, 2011





 

 
Marble Table with Peonies and Lemon, 2021
oil on panel
32" x 24"
$3200
  




Winter Solstice, 1988
oil on linen
70" x 50"
$12,000
Exhibited in "Imagined Affinities: Echoes of Edwin Dickinson in Contemporary American Painting"
at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2002




Autumn Cupid, 1996
oil on linen
62" x 50"
$10,000
  



 

Spring Bouquet and Chinese Patterns
oil on canvas, 40 x 50" image size (48 x 58" framed in gold)
$7500





Early June Bouquet, 2020
oil on panel
32" x 24"
$3200
  




Tea Jar and Turban Squash, 2012
oil on panel
24" x 32"
$3200





River with June Bouquet 2012
oil on panel
24" x 24"
$2800





Still Life with Turquoise Vase, 2011
oil on panel
24" x 24"
$3200
  




Two Spring Bouquets with Tree of Life 2011
oil on panel
24" x 24"
$2800
  




Apples and Roses, 2000
oil on panel
24" x 32"
$3200
  



 
Fulper Bouquet, 2005
oil on panel
32" x 24"
$3200
    




OCTOBER DEMIJOHN, 2019
oil on board 
24 x 32"
$3200






River Bouquet in an Aurene Vase 
Oil on board 
32 x 24"
$3200







Blue Sound Morning, 2016
oil/board, 24" x 32"
$3200






Still Life with Roses and Persimmons, 2016
oil/board, 24 x 24"
$2800






First Snow, 2016
oil/board, 24 x 32"
$3200






Cape Henlopen, 2016
oil/board, 24 x 32"
$3200






Morning Glories, 2016
oil/board, 12 x 10"
Private Collection






Fulper Night Bouquet , 2016
oil/board, 32" x 24''
$3200






Table with Green Apples, 2016
oil/linen, 50"x 36"
$6,500






Vase and Rose Bouquet
Oil on board, 24 x 32"
Private Collection




Group 1   |    Group 2   |    Group 3   |    Group 4   |    Group 5   |    Group 6   |    Group 7   |    Group 8




Reviews

Philadelphia painter Scott Noel wrote in a catalog of Trefny's works in 1994, "In their orchestration of objects, fabrics and flowers, Frank Trefny's still life paintings evoke a world of harmonious, sensual richness. The pictures are lush and full, celebrating the pleasures of beautiful things and beautiful painting, but the images also summon complex, layered feelings, the joy of their painterly sensuality leavened with wit and melancholy."

In Art in America magazine (May 1996), esteemed art critic and contributing editor Gerrit Henry writes, "Trefny is a master at turning realistic configurations into painterly abstractions, and his unusually large (for still life) canvases can be read over and over again for their many incidents of exalted painterly brushwork in his renderings of brocades, Chinese screens, pagoda tables, folded and open Oriental fans, homegrown vegetables, flower arrangements and spreads of brilliant silks. Trefny haunts antique and junk stores before spending days assembling his "rude objets" into a setup he can live with--and paint. The results are astonishingly beautiful canvases, presenting many vistas all at once."

Henry, Gerrit, "Frank Trefny," Art in America, May, 1996

Other Publications: Scott, William P., "Frank Trefny," American Artist, December 1987.