American painter Linden Frederick will collaborate with fifteen of America’s most celebrated writers for Linden Frederick: Night Stories, a multidisciplinary exhibition of fifteen new paintings and original short fiction, on view from May 11 through June 30, 2017 at Forum Gallery in New York City. 

A roster of America’s most renowned, celebrated, and honored authors were invited by Linden Frederick to write a work of short fiction inspired by one of fifteen paintings in Night Stories. Such a collaboration is an unprecedented concept for both Linden Frederick and Forum Gallery.

The 15 authors whose fiction will be featured in Night Stories are:

• Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
• National Book Award-finalist Andre Dubus III (House of Sand and Fog)
• National Book Award-winner Louise Erdrich (The Round House)
• National Book Award-finalist Joshua Ferris (Then We Came to the End)
• Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen (Rizzoli & Isles series)
• Academy Award-nominee Lawrence Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark)
• Kirkus Prize-winner Lily King (Euphoria)
• Edgar Award-winner Dennis Lehane (Mystic River)
• Newberry Medal-winner Lois Lowry (The Giver)
• PEN/Faulkner Award-winner Ann Patchett (Bel Canto)
• New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice (Crazy in Love)
• Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Russo (Empire Falls)
• Pulitzer Prize-winner Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge)
• Academy Award-winner Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs)
• PEN USA Award-winner Daniel Woodrell (Winter’s Bone)

In Night Stories, Linden Frederick's paintings are nocturnal visions of rural and small-town America, and imbued with a rich sense of mystery, both “ominous and sublime” (Maine Home & Design). Frederick’s signature style has drawn comparisons to that of Edward Hopper; except in Frederick's work a human presence is only suggested.

“From concept to initiation, this project has been seven years in the making,” says Linden Frederick. “My paintings have a strong narrative element. The growing number of authors, screenwriters, and playwrights collecting my work, and the resulting conversations with them as to why they are connecting so strongly to it as storytellers, made me decide an exhibit defining and honoring that connection could broaden the traditional art viewing experience and provide a cross-cultural entry point for a wider audience.”

Concurrent with the opening of Night Stories, Forum Gallery will publish a book of the paintings included in the exhibition, together with the short fiction inspired by them.

Following its premiere at Forum Gallery, Linden Frederick: Night Stories will also be exhibited in Rockland, Maine from August through October, 2017, at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.

LINDEN FREDERICK grew up in Upstate New York and studied art at Ontario College of Art in Toronto and the Academia de Belle Arte, Florence, Italy. Since moving to midcoast Maine in 1989, Linden Frederick has been included in exhibitions at the Farnsworth, Ogunquit and Portland museums of art in Maine and in gallery exhibitions in Maine, New York, Texas, New Mexico, South Carolina and Pennsylvania. Most recently, work by Linden Frederick was exhibited at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA. A Forum Gallery artist since 2004, Linden Frederick has been the subject of four one-person Forum Gallery exhibitions. His work has been acquired by public collections throughout the United States, and by private collectors from the literary, film and finance communities, among others. 

FORUM GALLERY was founded in New York City in 1961 as a gallery of American figurative art. Among the first artists represented were Raphael Soyer, Chaim Gross, David Levine and Gregory Gillespie, each of whom is an important part of Forum’s program today. The gallery is a founding member of the Art Dealers Association of America. From inception, Forum Gallery’s contemporary exhibition program has been augmented by curated, thematic exhibitions of historic importance, in keeping with the gallery’s focus on humanism. Forum Gallery’s program includes more than twenty American and European artists and estates, including American artists Steven Assael, William Beckman, Linden Frederick, Alan Magee and Brian Rutenberg; and Spanish masters Cesar Galicia and Guillermo Munoz Vera.

Forum Gallery regularly exhibits at art fairs throughout the United States. The gallery exhibited at the inaugural edition of The Art Show (ADAA – Park Avenue Armory) and has since participated twenty times. An early exhibitor at the Chicago International Art Exposition at Navy Pier, Forum now exhibits at EXPO CHICAGO annually. In 2000, Forum Gallery mounted an Odd Nerdrum exhibition at the FIAC in Paris, and today the gallery exhibits regularly at fairs in San Francisco, New York, Miami, Houston, Seattle and Chicago. More information is available at www.ForumGallery.com.