Fritz Proctor is an American Painter from Niagara Falls, New York. Fritz acquired his BA in Studio Art from the University of Buffalo. His work has been exhibited nationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Recent paintings by Fritz are done at night from observation. The night’s landscape is a space that allows preconceived notions of reality to be explored through the absence of visual information. Working from life has been a necessity for Fritz to understand the visual world. Observing and feeling the processes in which, the physical world operates on has helped him develop an intuition with the natural world.

Light is essential to painters; It allows for color and form to be observed and organized. Working in the night’s dimness creates an obstacle for the painter. It limits what can and cannot be seen. Due to this obstacle, painting at night makes one frustrated and confused.

After painting in darkness, some paintings are reworked in the studio during daylight. The reworking of these paintings allows Fritz to utilize memory and light; working on the paintings in light allows the painter to solve issues that once remained invisible in the night. It also allows for an added layer of recalled perception/imagination to lay on top of the painting’s original direct observation.

Through the processes of creating this body of work, Fritz has become aware of many of the intuitive choices he makes when creating a painting. Working through the physical and psychological challenges of painting at night allows much freedom for him to interpret and explore the landscape as his instinctive self sees necessary.