Frank Balaam’s new work, Light through the Trees, is testimony to the resilience of both nature and artist. In the face of two devastating fires within years of each other;  one,which took out the Pioneer Hotel in Globe which housed the Balaam Gallery and the other, which took out vast acreages of northern forest in the Rodeo-Chedeski area, both artist and trees are beginning to send up magnificent shoots of new growth.

It was July of 2005 when fire consumed the Pioneer Hotel and the Globe Theater. The fire, which started in the abandoned upper floors of the Hotel, did not spare any of the six businesses which were housed on its ground floor. Balaam lost over 800 original paintings and drawings representing 25 years of the artists’ life work. As Frank says, “I would have given up completely and returned to England had it not been for the outpouring of support and friendship Nora and I received from the community.”

At the time of the fire, Frank had recently completed work on a 26 ft canvas mural for the Cobre Valley Community Hospital Foundation, as well as works from a number of major collections including a series of Native American Indians, southwest landscapes, a series of portraits of homeless people, brightly colored figurative compositions, a series of rock stars including original paintings of Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, and several Arizona Centenarian portraits which had been commissioned by the State of Arizona in 1987.

“Over time, I most intensely feel the loss of the portraits of my mother and brother,” Frank explained. “I don’t have children and my legacy, my contribution to life, was in all those vanished works. After the fire, I felt I had been cut adrift in outer space, abandoned, without substance or value.”

So while the loss of the Pioneer Hotel, which had been a landmark in downtown Globe for nearly 100 years, was felt by the entire community, the loss to Frank and Nora was both personal and professional. A lifetime of irreplaceable works. It took Frank time to pick up a brush again and when he did, he began by painting a series of local scenes to capture the community’s historic buildings. It was his way of reminding us that these buildings which are irreplaceable treasures can be lost forever due to disrepair and neglect.

A year later, Frank has established a small studio in the lower floor of his house on Silver Street and has streamlined his art to focus on the paintings of forests which he began during a plein air painting expedition in 2002. There he witnessed the Rodeo-Chedeski fire first hand. As he explains, it has only been in retrospect that I began to draw comparisons between that fire and the fire which destroyed his gallery.

“I began to identify with the forest’s stoic acceptance of the flames followed by determined resilience and a need for renewal in response to destructive forces.”

Looking at one of Frank’s treescapes for the first time you are immediately draw into a passionate world in which the artist finds vibrant energy inherent in every leaf and branch. “The trees,” he says, “are a reflection of realty, not imagination.”

“Imagination will stylize a tree with the simplified view of a child, whereas someone who takes time to really see will find that the reality of every individual tree is richer and more varied than the imaginary view. For example: my colors are not imaginary. If there are two similar dark greens and one is bluer, I recognize and emphasize the blue difference. It is similar to the approach we use when trying to identify a friend in a crowd; we search for recognition in the slight, almost imperceptible difference in the wall of faces. In the same way, I paint trees, by seeing the differences rather than similarities, as if I were a tree.”

Frank’s affinity with the forests and their vulnerability to irresponsible acts has prompted a journey of self reflection which has slowly revealed a way for the artist to rebuild. He sees his treespaces as a symbolic representation of our environments on many levels. Although the experience has been difficult, Balaam gains strength from the example of Mother Nature and her ability to come back from such devastation.

“I try to stay resolutely focused, regardless of growth-scars, on the beauty of living.”


Balaam’s paintings and murals are on exhibition locally at the Blue Mule Gallery, Cobre Valley Center for the Arts, the Cobre Valley Community Hospital, Pickle Barrel Trading Post, and Weavers Gallery and will be featured in January at a solo exhibition at the Coppermine Picture Café, Miami, Az. He is also represent by the Meyers rive gauche Gallery on Main street in Scottsdale, Arizona which will be hosting a solo exhibition of his works in November. See: www.meyersartgallery.com   and www.copperminepicturecafe.com

Frank Balaam graduated from the Edinburg Colleges of Art in England, and traveled extensively throughout Europe and Africa before coming to the States. He discovered Globe in 1985 when he found himself traveling across the US working on a series of American Portraits. The landscape reminded him of time spent traveling in Europe nearly a decade earlier; with small houses dotting the hillside and a business community built around the historic downtown district.  Here, he also met a collective of artisans working to restore the old courthouse at the corner of Oak and Broad into an arts center and felt an affinity with the community and its landscape.

Balaam stayed and found a job working with developmentally disabled adults. It was his genius in designing a process which involved everyone, at every skill level in creating distinctive folk art furniture which became the foundation of Angela’s World, named after his sister who still lives in England, and is developmentally disabled.

The company established a warehouse in Miami and sold its pieces all over the world. It employed over 60 developmentally disable adults during the course of its six year run and was successful in showing society that all people have value and can contribute in a meaningful way.