Sondra Freckelton

Sondra Freckelton began making abstract sculptures in wood and plastic while a student at the Art Institute of Chicago. Although she met with resounding success as a sculptor, in the early 1970s she turned to realistic still lifes in watercolor. Freckelton now paints flowers, vegetables, and handmade objects associated with feminine family activities—quilts, garden implements, household objects that "are the quiet work of housewives and artisans." Her subjects speak "about life—about how we slept, ate and dreamed and lived." Recently Freckelton has exhibited oils and pastels for the first time and expanded her subject matter to include figures as well. She continues to celebrate the beauty of ordinary life in many of her canvases—one work, for example, shows a woman weeding a garden, another depicts Freckelton's husband, Jack Beal, tucked into bed with milk, cookies, and the New York Times.

Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987)