Dick Frizzell was born in Tāmaki Makaurau and brought up in Heretaunga Hastings. He studied at the University of Canterbury’s Ilam School of Fine Arts from 1960 to 1964. He then moved to Tāmaki Makaurau where he had a variety of jobs. He was a cartoon animator in 1966 and later the art director for an advertising agency, this work anticipating the pop imagery of many of his paintings. He left the agency in 1974 to freelance as a designer and illustrator.
From 1979, Frizzell was a lecturer in painting at the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. His first solo exhibition was at Barry Lett Galleries, Tāmaki Makaurau, in 1978. He has continued to exhibit regularly since then throughout Aotearoa. In 1979, he travelled to study art in the United States. His early works frequently centred on deliberately banal subject matter. He has used the techniques of high art to transform low-art images, exploiting the dichotomy between the two with considerable wit.
