‘I am in all of the paintings I do’: World-renowned portrait artist Rose Frantzen has an eye for capturing Iowans

Maquoketa artist Rose Frantzen was recently awarded one of the highest honors in portrait painting. Out of 2,200 submissions, Frantzen’s piece Last Light won the Grand Prize in the Portrait Society of America’s 2026 International Portrait Competition. 

When Frantzen accepted the award on April 11 in Atlanta, she described Last Light as “a love letter to all of the people who have ever taken the time to pose for her.” According to Frantzen’s peers in the PSA — who have voted to give her the People’s Choice Award three times, including this year — “her work consistently honors the individuality of her subjects while revealing something universal about the human experience.” 

Some of that work is currently on view as part of a Dubuque Museum of Art group exhibition entitled “What Now?” The show includes eight Midwestern artists who were among the first to show their work at the Voices Warehouse, the temporary home of DuMA as construction crews work to expand the museum. 

Frantzen has been commissioned to paint USDA Sec. Tom Vilsack, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver and George Washington Carver mentoring future Vice President Henry A. Wallace at Iowa State University. But she’s best known for her portraits of everyday Iowans. 

Portrait of Maquoketa, a series of 180 12”-by-12” portraits of Frantzen’s neighbors in her small Iowa hometown, was selected for display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in D.C. in 2009 and ’10. With the project, Frantzen sought to “democratize the portrait,” painting anyone who volunteered.

“The fact that show actually wound up in the Smithsonian says, ‘You never know what’s possible and where something can go,’” Frantzen told LV. “And it can come from Maquoketa, it can come from Dubuque. Right? We can hit heights that we don’t know.”

For the people who sat for Frantzen, perhaps it was just a few hours of posing, but for her it was months of afternoons and late nights.

“Even in this kind of homogeneous population where most of the people had somewhat the same background … I found, again and again, sitting across from anybody, for hours, with an open posture and really just meeting them in the moment as much as you possibly can, you actually experience an individual,” Frantzen shared at a DuMA art talk this year. “You’re just kind of blown away that no matter what their story is, everybody is unique. Everybody has value, and everybody has dignity, and some ache, or some need, or some wish, or some desire to be seen.”

Later purchased by Davenport’s Figge Art Museum, Portrait of Maquoketa was first displayed at the Voices Warehouse in Dubuque. Since the first Voices show in 2005, with 60-some paintings placed upon pillars in the large and then-dusty warehouse, the district has found new life, shifting from dilapidated, abandoned buildings into a vibrant district on the National Register of Historic Places. It now offers incredible restaurants, businesses and studio apartments, all with beautiful brick walls. 

It’s fair to say that the first Voices show kickstarted the revitalization around the district, Frantzen said. Our interview took place in the gallery Frantzen shares with her husband C.A. Morris, who is also featured in the “What Now?” exhibition.

The Portrait Society of America wrote that Frantzen’s oil paintings “remind us that portraiture is not simply about likeness, but about connection and storytelling. It’s likely that being rooted to her hometown created space for the depth of her work, allowing her to challenge assumptions and biases on each canvas and show us that lofty dreams and tremendous skill can emerge from the valleys of the Heartland.”

Even after winning the Grand Prize, Frantzen said she approaches every painting with self-doubt and open questions.

“I ask these questions and I try to put it on canvas and I’m gonna fail. And I think I failed, and I fail, and I fail. But I’d rather be in the mix of trying to ask those questions. What happens when you’re putting it on the easel is you’re allowing that question to kind of open itself up to more and more layers than your first question might have actually started.”

When she finishes a piece and finds she hasn’t failed, she reflects on how or what it was that made the painting work. 

“You don’t quite know how you get there. Then you hold it as a beacon for you to figure out; what did you learn? Like, how did I get there?”

One portrait Frantzen regards as a beacon is Held in Brambles, a painting currently in private collection I recall her working on in the middle of winter in ’98. The portrait is of my mother, wrapped in red velvet, eyes on Frantzen, space heater just out of frame. It is striking the way the morning light dapples her brown curls, the misty hue of Driftless hills and valleys. 

“I just happened to have your mom’s [painting] around long enough to actually have it teach me,” she said. “Not that long, because it sold.” 

While the painting is of my mother, it also is not. “I am in all of the paintings I do,” Frantzen explained.

Despite living in an obscure Midwestern town on the Mississippi, Frantzen is well-known by representational painters worldwide. Her painting demos have packed as many as 700 of her peers in one room. She continues to offer workshops and mentor other artists, both across the world and within her own hometown at the Maquoketa Art Experience, which emerged after her Smithsonian exhibition.

“What Now?” (Frantzen notes it could also have been called “Now What?”), will be on view through Sept. 20. Next up at DuMA: “Entre Tonos,” with art from Indigenous and Hispanic artists within 300 miles of Dubuque, as well as “Echoes of Time and Place: Sauk Art and Culture.” Each exhibition will run from Oct. 3 to Feb. 27.  

Exhibition details:

“What Now?” Dubuque Museum of Art, on view through Sunday, Sept. 20

Featured artists: Gene Tully (Dubuque), Wendy Rolfe (Peosta), Louise Kames (Dubuque), Delores Fortuna (Wisconsin), Tom Metcalf (Wisconsin), Rose Frantzen (Maquoketa), C.A. Morris (Maquoketa), Beth Bird (Elizabeth, Illinois) and the late Bill Farrell (Illinois; 1936-2021)

This article was originally published in Little Village’s September 2026 issue.