This past weekend we took family guests visiting from Arlington, Texas to the Boardwalk for the requisite Sunday afternoon spectacle. They saw a Freakshow and we saw a ghost from the past.
As our oversized party of six weaved through the steamy crowd hunting for the red-striped awning -- burgers at Sidewalk Cafe, they saw Treeman, Harry Perry, and some other guy balancing an oversized couch cushion on top of his head. We saw Frankie G.
He was gone for years, and then all of a sudden, there he was, just like old times, his vendor's blanket laid out with all of those familiar sweet, stoic faces that have become a part of our home since we began to collect Frankie's paintings in 2008.
Over the years people have asked us about the paintings and the artist, but other than "this really great guy Frankie G. who we met on the Boardwalk," there was no other information to offer. He had no website, no Facebook page, no SEO trail. Imagine.
Postcards, prints of original works, are his best sellers, but he had a few paintings and one especially that caught our attention. He gave us an oral history of balloons and said that he liked the idea of an adult carrying a huge bouquet. Sometimes, he says, we are all so inundated with information, science, the mechanics of how things work. Wouldn't it be nice if we could allow some innocence back into our adult lives and just enjoy something simple and magical, like balloons?
Frankie G.
fggallery.com
