Check Out Katherine Fraser’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katherine Fraser.

Hi Katherine, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I grew up in Maine as an only child, and I think that formative experience contributed to my love of solitude and interest in exploring the solitary figure in my work. I pursued an art career because I didn’t feel there was any other choice for me. I have always loved art, and I have always been making things. When I was in high school I was pretty serious about ballet, and I was a good student, but when I asked myself, what is the thing I can’t live without? Art was the answer. That’s how I decided to go to art school. I’m so grateful that I thought to ask myself that because it has absolutely turned out to be true. I’ve been a professional artist for my entire adult life and I have never thought of anything else I could imagine making me as happy.

When choosing an art school, I explored every option between Maine and Maryland, and at the time The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was the only school that was really teaching painting skills, so it was the only place I applied. PAFA is a very traditional, academic art school, where I learned to paint in the style of the old masters, but my work landed somewhere between traditional and conceptual.

For the last 25 years, I have remained in Philadelphia, and have been pursuing a steady art practice, showing my work in galleries, and doing the occasional commission. My work has evolved over time, of course, but there has always been a throughline. I am currently focusing on deepening the thematic threads in my work and trying to loosen up the brushwork and incorporate some elements of abstraction into the images.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
My career certainly hasn’t followed a straight line, and I am still struggling to get my sales and gallery representation to a point where I never have to waitress again, but in another way, art has brought a beautiful consistency to my life.

One of the great things about art is that you don’t need anyone’s permission to do it, and discipline has never been an issue for me. Having the consistency of solid art practice has meant that even through life’s deepest heartbreaks and struggles, there has been a major part of my identity that has remained unshakable.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I work in oil paint, and I create large-scale, realistic paintings of people that tell a story. I usually paint single figures, and I think of them like film stills, frozen moments of awareness. While I come from a tradition of life painting, which is painting what you see in front of you, I am not interested in recreating life, I am interested in creating feelings. I think of myself more as a storyteller than a documentarian. I don’t use live models. I do a lot of sketching, and fragments of ideas will come from that, but to a large extent I just start the paintings with a feeling for an emotion that I want to express through the figure, and then the narrative grows around it. I tend to paint women because I am a woman, and it’s the truest to my own experience, but my deepest goal is to create images that will resonate with everyone, male and female, young and old.

This opportunity to connect with people, to communicate, is a huge part of why I make art. It’s not enough for me to just make the paintings and express myself, I need the paintings to get out and have a life of their own. I hope that by working from a place of authenticity and generosity, other people will recognize themselves in my work, and it will make them feel less alone. My process is driven more by intuition than planning. I work on a number of paintings at once, and by going back and forth between pieces themes start to emerge, and the work grows up as a body. What makes this way of working fun is that I feel like I am in dialogue with the work; it’s a combination of actively making decisions, and being quiet and letting the paintings tell me what they need.

Because I work intuitively, and from my own experience, the paintings are somewhat autobiographical. Rather than depicting specific memories, they are more recreations of feelings that I have had at certain times in my life. I make the images open-ended so that they can inspire multiple interpretations. I never want the viewer to feel that he or she is peering into something private. I filter my ideas through layers of symbolism and narrative so that I get away from making art that is pure self-expression, and move toward something that has more versatility in its ability to communicate.

I think that people respond to my work because it shows skill, and it’s thought-provoking, but it’s also personal, and emotionally engaging. I’m trying to create paintings where the viewer will walk up and emotionally engage with the character in the painting, and then project their own story onto the image. I use suggestive props, narrative elements, and even titles to add layers of intrigue. The communication aspect is probably my favorite part about making art, and I truly feel that the process is incomplete until the paintings can go out into the world and people can relate to them. I feel really lucky to get to spend my time doing something that I find so endlessly interesting and challenging, and that I love so much.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I have a solo show coming up very soon! The show is titled “All Fun and Games” and will open at Paradigm Gallery, in Philadelphia, on May 5th.

Contact Info:

• Website: katherinefraser.com
• Instagram: @katherinefraser

Image Credits
Mae Belle Vargas