The South Carolina coast is not just scenery. It is a force that shapes how artists see, work, and build a painting. For Chris Frick and Nadine O. Vogel, that force enters abstraction in distinct ways.
Chris Frick is a full-time abstract artist who moved to the South Carolina coast from Germany, a change in geography that shaped her work in lasting ways. Working primarily in acrylic, she does not push a painting toward resolution, allowing openness and structure to exist at the same time. The raw coastal environment of the American South influences how she experiences orientation and distance, an awareness that shapes how space develops on the canvas. Her paintings are not about describing the landscape. Instead, they reflect the experience of living between places, languages, and ways of belonging, where more than one sense of identity and place can exist at once. Frick works daily in her studio on Broad Street. Her work is currently on view at Simpatico Gallery in Charleston.
Nadine O. Vogel, an abstract artist working between South Carolina and Florida, creates dynamic compositions using acrylics and mixed media, often applying unique tools to canvas, wood, and recycled surfboards. Her creative process is inspired by the sights, sounds, and rhythms of the ocean, as well as her life experiences as a published author, speaker, TV host, interior designer, global disability consultant, and a wife and mother to two women, one of whom is disabled. Her work is often characterized by textured surfaces and a bold visual language, creating compositions with depth, variation, and visual strength that convey resilience and forward momentum. Vogel’s art is featured at Hagan Fine Art in Charleston and in galleries across Florida.
Together, their work shows how a single coastline can be understood through different lives, with each artist bringing her own way of seeing to the same place.
Frick and Vogel’s work will be on display at the Isle of Palms Exchange Club on April 25, from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.