Colin Fraser is a Scottish painter who works with egg tempera to create his detailed still lives and landscapes. He was born in 1957 in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Fraser studied art at Brighton Polytechnic before moving to Sweden where he currently works and lives. Fraser's work is exhibited at the Catto Gallery (in the United Kingdom). He has had exhibitions at this gallery in 2012, 2015, 2017, and 2019. These exhibitions can still be viewed on the Catto Gallery website here: https://cattogallery.co.uk/artists/colin-fraser-egg-tempera-artist/. Fraser's painting style involves small brushstrokes of tempera paint and layering. He pays careful attention to light and its affects, which is amplified by the qualities of tempera paint. Additionally, the aspect of his work that I was first drawn to was his painting technique: broken color, the very painting technique with which I am working. I liked that his brushstrokes were much smaller and his canvases much larger, making his artworks more realistic. I also appreciated how he paid attention to light, especially since my goal for my current project is to use a defined light source and play with the effects of light in my broken color landscape paintings. I am especially drawn to this painting because of the incredible detail it holds. All of the individual brushstrokes, especially in the field of grass, come together to create this lovely landscape and portray all of the little shadows and highlights of the vast field. You can see how Fraser paid attention to lighting on the trees on the right, where the light shining through the branches is portrayed by a color switch to amber, as well as on the small blades of grass in the field, and in the mountain range as it approaches the sun. I also love the mystery that the chair adds to the landscape piece. It adds an element of the human that the landscape is otherwise completely free of. I believe I can apply a more detailed and smaller brushstroke to my broken color landscape painting that will help portray more details and varied texture. Additionally, I like how Fraser changes the color of the trees where the light hit them into amber and will be using this color-changing technique in my next piece. If you press the button above, it should take you to a video. This video highlights Fraser's inspiration, process, and chosen medium: egg tempera. It is shot at his studio in Sweden. One of the most profound things I learned from this video was the idea that there are three entities at play as you paint. The first two are the painter and the viewer. The painter can get lost in the painting process and paint intuitively. The viewer is able to step back from he painting and make intellectual decisions about what should be done. The third entity is the painting itself which can sort of instruct you on what to do next. The painting itself needs some things to be done to it and it will try to signal them to you. Fraser believes you need to get lost in the process and let the painting become what it needs to be. I like this idea of the three personas and will be thinking about this the next time I paint. Asking myself: what do I think this painting needs as a viewer, a painter, and the painting itself?
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This lecture was so incredibly detailed and informative. I already knew most of the historical information about Japan including the Edo Period and the Shogun, the Tale of Genji, the Japanese Tea Ceremony, and the opening of Japan from my global studies, English, and art classes from sophomore year. Some new concepts revealed to me during the lecture were the third understanding of Japanese aesthetics: Yugen, and the writings of Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. Yugen is a concept related to Buddhist teachings and is a type of depth and mystery associated with beauty. Yugen is a graceful beauty seen in the sadness of human life and is often connected to otherworldly beings. Tanizaki was writing essays during the unrest in Japan in the 1930s that called for a rejection of Western culture and a return to old Japanese customs. His writing was very nostalgic, looking with melancholy, or Sabi (the second understanding of Japanese aesthetics), upon traditional Japanese architecture, materials, fashion, and practices. I find the idea of Wabi, Sabi, and Yugen to be so compelling and actually prefer these to the western ideas of beauty. I wonder how many times I have felt Yugen or Sabi and not associated my melancholy feeling with these ideas. If Tanizaki was looking nostalgically towards the past and felt like Japanese aesthetic was lost, I feel like he was only referring to Sabi and Yugen. If Wabi is an everyday, regular beauty, then shouldn't Wabi always exist even as ideas of "everyday" objects change? I am so excited to apply these parts of the three understandings of Japanese aesthetics to my paintings and I feel like I already have been including them to a certain extent. I certainly do not include the simplicity or melancholy emotion in my art, but I use the concept of imperfection a lot as a paint roughly textured repeated dollops of vibrant oil paint.
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Emma LindleyHi! I am an art student at Maggie Walker and I am so excited to share with you my thoughts, my art ideas, and my finished works. I hope you enjoy! Archives
June 2021
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