Chisholm Gallery

DuVal, Frank

American Contemporary

Since the McDonald’s LPGA Championship in 2004, Frank DuVal has filled about fifty sketchbooks with on-the-spot drawings of women competing in more than twenty LPGA tournaments across the country.

“It’s a rich artistic opportunity to sketch women who are not posing. They are fully engaged in striving for athletic excellence. It’s all about energy and grace. If Rembrandt were alive today, he’d be watching, and sketching, the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association on tour.”

In 2011, Frank was commissioned to execute drawings of the fourteen members of Team USA, the American women who would compete against a team of European professionals for the Solheim Cup. The drawings were presented to the players as gifts from Rosie Jones, the team captain. Frank’s drawings of Rosie Jones and Sophie Gustafson are featured in Vicki Moon’s nationally-acclaimed book, “Golf Styles.”

Frank’s interest in sketching has taken him, not only to golf tournaments, but also to jazz clubs, dance classes, and “pretty much the middle of nowhere, where I am away from civilization, observing (and sketching) critters in the wild.” Frank has done month-long tours in Badlands National Park and Everglades National Park, as artist-in-residence. In 2010, he was chosen to be the official artist for that year’s Women’s Air Race Classic. Frank has exhibited his original drawings in twenty-one solo exhibitions since 1970.