Artists

Hazel Frankel is an artist, author, teacher and calligrapher. She holds MAs in Fine Arts and English from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and a PhD from Sheffield University, U K. Currently a Research Associate at Wits, her interests highlight aspects of cultural memory, migration and exile. Frankel studied with and was mentored by Deborah Bell, Nina Romm, Karel Nel and Judy Shear among others, and her work has been influenced by Mark Tobey and other Abstract Expressionists, Cy Twombly, the poetic painter, R. B. Kitaj, and Marc Chagall. She has held several solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows. Her paintings are held in various private collections.

Combining acrylic, water colour, ink and collage on canvas or paper, Frankel's dense, multi-leveled paintings lean towards abstraction. Scraps of fabric, kapok, beads and lace and intense colour evoke expressive landscapes and fragmented cityscapes through the layering of broken images, enigmatic 'texts' and traces of memory.