The abstract painter can commence his drawing or canvas generally with only a preconceived notion, reflection or emotion.  The end result, whether finished or still seeking a conclusion is then determined by tools, paint, the colors or tones employed, and the size of the work as well as the mood of the moments.  He has far less guarantees than perhaps the realist painter or photographer that the finished expression will extend from calculated reason or logic.  This for me provides the excitement of taking the theme or feeling from the very first stroke, and following it to its own particular conclusion.  It is very much like creating the controlled accident.
Frank Wimberley

The Southampton Press
Thursday, November 10, 2005
The Ferregut Tower Gallery

By Andrew Botsford

ABSTRACT ARTIST TENDS A LIVING GARDEN OF IMAGES

Frank Wimberley thinks of his paintings as living things. Not that he’ll start
by telling you that straight out. You get the idea by the way he talks about his work, using terms and expressions typically used by parents when talking about their children, or horticulturists talking about their plantings.
“Sometimes you just have to let them go,” he says, describing the sometimes painful process of recognizing that he can’t work on a piece any more, and his offspring is ready to leave the nest.
Before that happens though, “I always walk away to give it time to absorb…” he says, shifting to the language of the gardener, “to give a painting time to breathe. Then I can go back and find surprises. I can go back and find something else,” as if new shoots or blossoms might come up while he wasn’t looking.  And later after he has described some of his techniques and how he goes about naming his abstract works---bold colors in dramatic gestural strokes of action painting and scraping with brushes, knives, the ends of sticks or pieces of wood, often layered and balanced by minimalist collage---he just might come out and say it: “it’s a living thing.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES
ART IN REVIEW
Friday, November 23, 2001
June Kelly Gallery
591 Broadway, near Houston Street
SoHo
Through Dec. 1
Frank Wimberley
“Compositions for Matter”
  The lively, tactile surfaces of Mr. Wimberley’s canvases sometimes appear as overall fields of light struck, subtly nuanced color, as in “Amber Plane.” Its fluid striations of golden tan are mottled with dark patches of erosion and other marks to create a materiality that is almost otherworldly.

   Other paintings are more solidly Anchored in the terrestrial. Landscape or seascape readings could easily be made of works like “Quay,” “Treacle” and “Dark-Haired Figure.” (The last bears no Trace of a figure, but a brushy segment of pale yellow sand is topped by a thickly stroked “sky” of glistening black.)
 

Dark Haired Figure 2006
40x40 inches Mixed Media
  There are hints that Mr. Wimberley admires Mark Rothko, particularly in the painting called “Blackness,” in which a somber rectangle of black, edged at the bottom with a trace of mustard color, is poised atop a rough-surfaced white field. Despite the elegance and finesse of The work, it might be read, I suppose, as an ethnic statement.

   In any case, these paintings are good to behold: beautifully brushed and infused with a light that magnifies their intensity.
GRACE GLUECK

ADELPHI 2000

This is a statement of prose written by Frank Wimberley to accompany his one person
exhibit “Then and Now” January 24 – February 23, 2000 at Adelphi University Center Gallery, Garden City, New York.

PUSH PULL SURFACE
WRENCH RAW CANVAS TIGHT.
STEP TO THE WINDOW.
BEFORE THE MUSIC BEGINS, SOUNDS COME.
LISTENING, ARE YOU?
THE VOICES URGE,
STEP INTO THE WINDOW.
SCORE, SCUFF, TEAR, SCRAPE.
YES, SAVE THE DEBRIS.
PUSH THE FLOPPY BLACK FLUID BRUSH
INTO THE MIX, ACCENTUATING
OPEN CONTRAST, WHITE, COBALT BLUE,
STROKE,   GESTURE,  SURPRISE.
A   SURPRISE  EACH  TIME.
QUICK  BRIGHT  EYE.
CHERRY RED!
I HEAR THE MUSIC NOW.
I TURNED FROM THE SURFACE JUST MOMENTS AGO,
THE STATEMENT UNFINISHED, THE WORK COMPLETE.
THE ART GOES ON, BLITHELY,
SEEKING  A  PATH FOR ITSELF.
NUDGING YOU FORWARD TO ITS MARK,
AND BEYOND.

         FRANK  W.  WIMBERLEY , 2000

The following was written for the introduction to Frank Wimberley’s “New Paintings” Exhibit at June Kelly Gallery, January 10th to February 5th, 1997,
By Rose Slivka:

Frank Wimberley is a natural abstract expressionist. For him, abstraction means the nature of the material and how it behaves in his touch, how his particular gesture and energy at any particular moment affects the tempo and movement of the paint, pigment, the physical relationship of his body in the space of his choice to the material. Wimberley’s abstraction is deeply personal and individually unique. “It’s almost like a thumb print”, he says.

For Frank Wimberley, the act of the art is the dialogue of the artist with his tools and materials, his body in the space and light of the studio, his psyche at the moment of action. Each confrontation of the artist with his surface plane whether it be canvas, paper or wood is an arena for the event, a surface moving inexorably into itself, layer on layer, sometimes naked and sparse, sometimes rich with allusions, and what happens is what happens.

His love of paint is contagious as it resonates with the lyric energy of his abstract stroke – the sense of paint piled by brush, palette knife, rag, tissue and whatever else comes to hand. Wimberley exhilarates at the curl of a brushstroke, the scumble, the grist and the bristle those textures together with the creamy ridges and smooth flat stained ones, with color thinly applied, sometimes combed, sloshed, pulled and scraped.

Jazz, a consistent theme in his work, is expressed in swift brushwork, the unique impulse for improvisation, daring to allow accidents of the creative process remain as a sign of the spontaneous gesture.
The New York Times, June 29, 1986
ART
Abstraction Displays Its Energy
by Helen A. Harrison

Line and gesture are elegantly balanced in Frank Wimberley's "A Few Choice Things," its title pointing up the fact that abstract art, even at its most spontaneous and intuitive, is more choice than chance. It's companion piece, "A Few Things More," proves the case by virtually duplicating effects in the former work that might have seemed accidental or arbitrary.
A Few Choice Things
'86 Acrylic, collage on canvas 36x36 inches