Meet The Team: Richard Frumess
Our ongoing feature "Meet The Team" is our way of introducing you to the fine folks behind the scenes who make R&F possible. Many of you will already be familiar with this week’s featured team member - founder Richard Frumess.
Please provide a brief description of what you do day to day at R&F.
Technical consulting, public relations, community outreach, and the occasional color workshop.
How many years have you been working for R&F?
34 1/2 years. I was there from the beginning, you might say.
What do you do outside of work? Do you have an art background or related practice?
I am involved in the development of the Kingston Midtown Arts District. Before starting R&F, I was a painter and worked in an art store.
If someone came to visit Kingston, what's one thing you would recommend they see, do, eat, or experience?
Check out the art scene -- we have some great galleries and events. Drive around to experience a sense of the city and its various neighborhoods and be sure to see the 17th century building from the time the Dutch ruled the area. You can also check out some of the relics of the time when Kingston was a major port in the canal system. If you have time, hike or bike the rail trails, which are reminders of the era when Kingston was a rail center.
Favorite color in R&F's paint line?
There is no one color, but a class of colors that we make here at R&F that I am very proud of. These are what I call the "complex earth colors," based on mixes of earth pigments and translucent spectrum colors. We are almost alone among companies to offer them. This is no doubt due to the fact that they are composed of 3-5 different pigments, are labor intensive and very tricky to make. But the complexity of top tones and under tones that they provide the artist makes it worth it and makes our color line truly unique.
Although I developed the original group of complex earth colors, I am very proud of the fact that all the recent mixes have been by our paint-makers, whose interest and dedication guarantees that the quality and innovativeness of our color line continues on.