Dancing Through Fields of Color

May 6, 2019
As a child, Helen Frankenthaler, an Abstract Expressionist who created the Color Field painting movement, shirked rules in favor of free expression. “Instead of going to bed, Helen filled the sink with water. She dribbled in drops of ruby red nail polish and watched the color flow.” With sweeping strokes, Sicuro conveys the young artist’s joy in the act of creation, her images of seaside landscapes spilling off the canvasses, and waves trailing from the beach she’s painting into her bedroom. Following her father’s death when she was 11, “her canvases remained blank, her world of colors and light...dark,” Frankenthaler attends art school, where she adheres to rigid expectations. But the work of Jackson Pollock reawakens her, liberating her to paint emotively. Back matter provides biographical content, insight into Frankenthaler’s creative process, and an art activity. Ages 4–8.

March 1, 2019

Gr 2-5-A prominent abstract expressionist whose career spanned six decades but who is not as well known as her male contemporaries today, Helen Frankenthaler loved color and celebrated it through an artistic style that came to be known as "soak-stain painting." In this picture book biography, Frankenthaler's early life and career are recounted in language that is every bit as vibrant as the illustrations that recall her paintings. Students with a creative bent will relish reading about Frankenthaler's difficulty conforming to the expectations of her art teachers and, later, those of the art world at large. Then, the story recalls her childhood vacations to the mountains and seaside to demonstrate the techniques Frankenthaler developed for creating paintings as boundless as those natural phenomena. Sicuro's bold illustrations are a wonderful match for a biography on an abstract artist; the saturated colors, thick lines, and rounded shapes work well with Brown's descriptive text to immerse readers in Frankenthaler's world. Two pages of back matter include a more formalized biography of Frankenthaler and examples of her paintings. VERDICT A pitch-perfect expression of a little-known artist in text and illustration alike, this is a top-notch example of the picture book biography.-Katherine Barr, Cameron Village Regional Library, Raleigh, NC

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2019
Abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) carries a deep fascination with color and light from childhood to adulthood.In Frankenthaler's wealthy, white Manhattan family, her parents nurture her artistic tendency toward abstraction--but her schools demand realism. A downcast Frankenthaler creeps past eight easels displaying eight identical pear paintings, while across the page, another version of her dances in midair, brushes in both hands, trailing swirls of nonrepresentational orange. In adulthood, she embraces her own path. The narration frames her artistic motivations as primarily emotional, undermining her deliberate aesthetic decisions. Moreover, though the textual descriptions of Frankenthaler's process are gorgeous ("Colors jetéd across the painting, merged and connected, like rivers into oceans"), neither the colorist's groundbreaking "soak-stain" technique--oils thinned with turpentine so they seep like watercolors--nor her level of influence as "one of the major Abstract Expressionists of the twentieth century" are mentioned until the bountiful backmatter. Sicuro's watercolor, ink, and charcoal pencil illustrations are spirited, the ones about art process especially buoyant; her use of watercolor is actually a better match for Frankenthaler's look than oils would have shown without Frankenthaler's own soak-stain technique. However, there's one enormous visual mismatch: Frankenthaler's work features paint that soaks, flows, bleeds, and wetly saturates canvas, while Sicuro uses mostly controlled and neatly identifiable brush strokes.Greatly enthusiastic, but it waters down Frankenthaler's actual work and importance. (timeline, activities, author's notes, quotes and sources, primary and secondary bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-9)

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2019
American Abstract Expressionist and Color Field movement pioneer Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) is an apt subject for a children's book?her trademark soak-stain technique, which involved pouring paints onto unprimed canvas, is eminently kid-friendly and easily reproduced in art classes. Introducing Frankenthaler to primary-grade readers, Brown's debut picture-book biography limns her subject's creative and imaginative childhood, dutiful art study in college, and early career in mid-twentieth-century NYC. When Frankenthaler meets modernist sensation Jackson Pollock, his drip-and-splatter painting technique inspires her: If he broke the rules, why couldn't she? At this point in the book the rhythmic text begins to mirror Frankenthaler's kinetic process: Helen grabbed a bucket of crimson and?POURED?setting her colors FREE. They RAN and RUSHED. Sicuro's compositions?in watercolor, ink, and charcoal pencil?can sometimes be busy, but they consistently reinforce the ideas of movement and color saturation. The strongest illustrations rely on fields of soaked watercolors to evoke this artist's essence. Fittingly, an appended Poured Paint/Soak-Stain Activity helps everything seep in, bringing young readers physical understanding of the art. Back matter also includes in-depth discussion of Frankenthaler's technique, with photos and a reproduction of the painting Mountains and Sea; a timeline; an author's note; and extensive lists of sources. katrina Hedeen

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2019
Brown's debut picture-book biography of Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler (19282011) limns her creative childhood, dutiful art study, and early career in mid-twentieth-century NYC. Once Frankenthaler develops her trademark "soak-stain" technique, the rhythmic text mirrors that kinetic process: "Helen grabbed a bucket of crimson and...POURED...setting her colors FREE." Sicuro's watercolor, ink, and charcoal-pencil illustrations reinforce the ideas of movement and color saturation. An appended art project helps everything seep in. Timeline. Bib.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

February 1, 2019
Abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) carries a deep fascination with color and light from childhood to adulthood.In Frankenthaler's wealthy, white Manhattan family, her parents nurture her artistic tendency toward abstraction--but her schools demand realism. A downcast Frankenthaler creeps past eight easels displaying eight identical pear paintings, while across the page, another version of her dances in midair, brushes in both hands, trailing swirls of nonrepresentational orange. In adulthood, she embraces her own path. The narration frames her artistic motivations as primarily emotional, undermining her deliberate aesthetic decisions. Moreover, though the textual descriptions of Frankenthaler's process are gorgeous ("Colors jet�d across the painting, merged and connected, like rivers into oceans"), neither the colorist's groundbreaking "soak-stain" technique--oils thinned with turpentine so they seep like watercolors--nor her level of influence as "one of the major Abstract Expressionists of the twentieth century" are mentioned until the bountiful backmatter. Sicuro's watercolor, ink, and charcoal pencil illustrations are spirited, the ones about art process especially buoyant; her use of watercolor is actually a better match for Frankenthaler's look than oils would have shown without Frankenthaler's own soak-stain technique. However, there's one enormous visual mismatch: Frankenthaler's work features paint that soaks, flows, bleeds, and wetly saturates canvas, while Sicuro uses mostly controlled and neatly identifiable brush strokes.Greatly enthusiastic, but it waters down Frankenthaler's actual work and importance. (timeline, activities, author's notes, quotes and sources, primary and secondary bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-9)

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.