On this date in 1969, Justine Frischmann was born.
Born in London to a Hungarian father and a Russian mother, she began studying music at the age of 11. She later attended University College London, where she studied architecture and met Brett Anderson. In 1989, she co-founded the band Suede with him but left in 1991.
In 1992, Frischmann co-founded her own band, Elastica, with drummer Justin Welch, who had also been in Suede. The band quickly gained prominence with their punk-influenced sound. Their debut single, “Stutter”, was released in 1993, and their self-titled debut album in 1995 became the fastest-selling debut album in UK history at the time, also finding success in the US. However, a follow-up album was slow to develop, and the band eventually broke up in 2001.
After her music career, Frischmann began to pursue a career in art. She moved to Boulder, Colorado, in 2005 to study painting at Naropa University, a liberal arts college. Her work has been described as abstract and influenced by her background in architecture. Her paintings often explore themes of faith and doubt & the tension between order and chaos. She has exhibited her work in various galleries and was shortlisted for the UK’s Marmite Prize for painting in 2012. She has also worked in television, co-presenting a BBC series on modern architecture.
In a 2016 interview, Frischmann stated that she doesn’t have a desire to make music anymore and that she feels she has found her medium in painting. She has expressed that making art feels less tiring and is a process she can do on her own, without the negotiation and scrutiny that came with being a musician in a band. She now lives and works as a visual artist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Regarding her private life, Frischmann dated her Suede bandmate Brett Anderson at the time they co-founded the group. She then dated Blur lead singer Damon Albarn from 1991 until the couple broke up in 1998, which served as inspiration for Blur’s 1999 singles “No Distance Left to Run” and “Tender”. In 2008, she married Ian Faloona, a professor of meteorology at UC Davis, California.
Happy birthday, Justine Frischmann!
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Featured image via NME.
