A brush with... Louis Fratino

A brush with... Louis Fratino

From A brush with... by The Art Newspaper

February 11, 2026 · 1h 6m · Season 32 · Episode 1

About this episode

Louis Fratino discusses his artistic influences and the personal experiences that shape his work.

Louis Fratino talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Fratino was born in 1993 in Annapolis, Maryland, US, and lives in New York. His paintings reflect on memory and the intimate details of daily life to transmit a deeply felt response to his immediate circumstances and the world beyond. His vision is channelled through an abiding passion for art history, and particularly Modernist painters in Europe and the US. Louis’s subjects are the people and places around him, beginning with himself and extending to family, friends, partners and lovers, who he pictures in interior spaces from kitchens to bathrooms and bedrooms, as well as in the city and in nature. Crucial to his art is an exploration of queer life, from touching scenes of companionship to images of sex and desire more broadly. Louis’s painting possesses an everyday poetry yet dwells on the big questions of life. It is a singular and deeply personal practice as well as a major contribution to the expression of queer identity and sexuality in a painterly field that has until recent decades been…

People in this episode

Host: Ben Luke

Guest: Louis Fratino

Topics covered

  • art influences
  • queer identity
  • memory in art
  • modernist painters
  • daily life
  • cultural experiences

Keywords

  • Louis Fratino
  • Ben Luke
  • queer art
  • memory
  • modernism
  • daily life
  • art history

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Annapolis, Maryland, US, New York

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