Mark Frankenburg

I am a mostly self-taught Ohio-born and Virginia-based artist. I always enjoyed art in school but never thought about going pro until around 2016. I have spent thousands of hours developing a unique, whimsical, playful style. I get bored easily so I am always changing what, and how, I make. My primary goal is to make things that look good to me. I am my own quality control. If I don’t like it, it doesn’t make the website, or Etsy, Instagram, etc. I will occasionally recreate a piece by special request, but in general every single thing I make is one-of-a-kind. I could make more stuff if I kept a bunch of patterns and templates and had more of an assembly-line style, but that is extremely boring to me. Isn’t the whole point of being an artist to keep creating new stuff?

When I first started making art again in 2016, I was exclusively painting with acrylics on canvas. I quickly realized A) there are a lot of really talented people already doing this, and B) I prefer “making my own canvases” out of wood. I mostly create and paint wooden crabs, fish, seahorses, whales, etc. Some are big, some are small, but most of the time they are smiling. I am often told that my work makes people smile. I love that my work makes peoples’ homes slightly happier places. What could be better than that?

Thanks for stopping by and let me know if you have any questions!