Frances Rhea Basch
1941 -  2003

Education: University of Miami, Florida, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Art Students League at Woodstock, Woodstock School of Art.

Granddaughter of Nathan Handwerker, the founder of Coney Island’s “Nathan’s

Famous” hot dog empire, Frances Rhea Basch put aside familial and financial considerations early in her life to pursue a career as a visual artist.

After receiving her degree from the University of Michigan, Basch moved to Woodstock, New York, to study with Arnold Blanch and others at The Art Students League’s summer school.  At her time there, her approach to daily figure study was whetted and prolific, and her obsession with the description of form using line and color began.  Working large and fast, her figurative paintings began to catch the attention of other artists working at this time, and she became a favorite in the milieu surrounding Arnold Blanch.

Working fervently as a student, Basch also immersed herself in the culture of that time and place: Woodstock, 1969.  To make ends meet and to “see the show”, Basch accepted a job as a line cook for the concession stand, The Hog Farm at “The Woodstock Music & Art Fair” in Bethel, New York, which also served to heighten her status among local Woodstock icons. 

Restless by nature, Basch made several cross-country trips in her Austin –Healy Sprite before boarding a small sailing craft and sailing for Key West, Florida, with two male companions. (Basch was the only swimmer in the group.)  Upon her arrival in Key West, Basch summarily abandoned her artwork for nearly a decade.  She became owner and operator of “El Lorro Verde” a popular, award-winning beachside café. She also became entrenched in the nightlife of Key West.  By the late 1980’s, the AIDS epidemic and drug culture had ravaged her closest circle of friends, and Basch moved “home” to Woodstock to reorder her life.

From 1991 until her untimely death in March of 2003, Frances Basch was once again immersed in the Woodstock Art Community, making lasting friends among the faculty and students, including Staats Fasoldt, Kate McGloughlin, E.S. DeSanna, and Tricia Cline, at the Woodstock School of Art, and showing regularly at the Woodstock Artists Association.  The last twelve years of her life were devoted to landscape and figure painting—mostly in watercolor—and expressed in vibrant and sensuous hues, many with a ferocious line quality that compares with the same found in the work of Joan Mitchell and William deKooning. Watercolor and water-based monotypes executed in both full sheet, (22” x 30”) and small format (8”x10” and smaller) are among the most illustrative of this claim, and Basch herself referred to these paintings as “her gems”.

As a painter and restless soul, Basch traveled to study the landscape in Tuscany, San Miguel de Allende, Margarita Island, Monhegan Island, and Block Island. Watercolor paintings of each locale are recognizable through Basch’s iconic, calligraphic mark-making and sumptuous use of color.

Basch’s final foray into figure study (1999-2003) was executed in clay, under the direction of Tricia Cline at The Woodstock School of Art.  Nearly twenty studies, all under 16”, still exist, and each belies the artist’s understanding of human form to create an exaggerated response to the attitude and life force of each model; a study, perhaps, of their personae rather than their anatomy.  Each figurine is a complete statement of the artist’s love of form, spark of genius, and consummate understanding of making art.

Whether it be a quick sketch dashed off from a model’s short pose, a toiled-over clay sculpture, or a color monotype devoted to the rapture of pure color, the work of Frances Rhea Basch will stand apart from the countless “good artists” of her time because of the absolute originality and feverish approach she took with each composition.

Her friend,

Kate McGloughlin
Executor