Kerry Schuss Gallery

Press Release

Kerry Schuss is pleased to present the gallery's 5th solo exhibition of paintings by New York self-taught artist Freddie Brice.

Freddie Brice (1920-1998) was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and moved to Harlem at age 9.  The artist held numerous jobs including elevator operator, laundry worker, and most importantly painted cargo ships at the Brooklyn Navy Shipyard. He began to make paintings in 1983 at an art workshop for seniors on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

In 1991 Brice's paintings were featured in the exhibition "Art's Mouth" at Artists Space curated by Connie Butler. The artist’s work is included in the collections of The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Milwaukee Museum of Art and The Old Dominion University, Gordon Collection, Norfolk, Virginia.  Brice's work has been exhibited at The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, VA and Milwaukee Museum of Art, Milwaukee WI.

"Freddie Brice Paints Two Paintings", made in 1990 by Les LeVeque & Kerry Schuss. In this video, Brice completes two paintings. While demonstrating his rhythmic painting style, he sings and speaks in a poetic verse about painting, hobbies and life.

 "It's in my way of drawin'. It's in my conscious of drawin'. It's in my mind. It became to be lovely to me. It became to be likely to me. Why, I like it more than I like anything else. I think it's a hobby. You know, speaking about a hobby. A hobby is a true thing ... When you begin to love something; when you begin to do something, a constructive, something that you like and love, it becomes a hobby. It becomes regular. It becomes continuously. It becomes outrageous. It becomes magnificent. It becomes to be something that you like to do for a hobby. And I like to do drawing for a hobby. I like to do drawing because I get understanding of what I'm doing. It gives me understanding of talking. It gives me understanding of books. It gives me understanding of drawing and hearing what I listen to. It gives me time, it gives me patience and it also gives me ability. Ability is when you gain what you're doing, and when you get enough of it you begin to have rehability, rehabiliteality of what you're doing. It becomes a whole lot to you. Drawing is rehabiliteality to me. I began to do it often and I began to do it much. And it's ability. It's rehabiliteality of what I love. And it's a hobby."

 Freddie Brice, NYC 1990 -excerpt from video