Frank Grisdale was born in Edmonton in 1954, his pursuit of the ‘perfect landscape’ began in 1976 when he volunteered as a photographer in Lesotho, which is a desolate island nation completely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. While traveling alone for four months through the isolated mountain villages, Frank had the luxury of time to shoot hundreds of rolls of film for both the people of Lesotho and for his own personal work. It was photographing high up in the cold Drakensburg mountain range that set Frank on his progression towards his current work: color landscapes of Western North America with a very unique style.Frank Grisdale shoots with an old, fully manual Nikon FM2 and also uses a Hobo — a handmade, manual, wooden 8 x 10 camera that he uses hand-held. He shoots landscape images almost exclusively, with a focus on the abstract. His photography is in collections of the Alberta Foundation of the Arts, the Toronto Dominion Bank and Oxford Properties. His first solo exhibition of 45 abstract landscapes, "Drawing with Light", was presented by the Provincial Museum of Alberta in the winter of 2002.
The Art Gallery of Alberta respectfully acknowledges that we are located in Treaty 6 Territory and Region 4 of the Metis Nation of Alberta. We respect this as the traditional and contemporary land of diverse Indigenous Peoples including the Plains Cree, Woodland Cree, Beaver Cree, Nitsitapi/Blackfoot, Métis, Nakota Sioux, Anishinaabe/Saulteaux/Ojibwe and Dene Peoples. We also acknowledge the many Indigenous, Inuit and Métis people who make Alberta their home today.