Talent Gordon Fraser

Channel:

Art

Genres:

Abstract, Buddhist Art, Contemporary, Figurative, Landscape

Role:

Painter

Hometown:

Princeton, NJ

Gordon Fraser was born in Boston, MA in December 1975. Shortly after, his family moved to Stamford, CT and then later to Princeton, NJ where he grew up and went to high school. Inspired by the gothic architecture of Princeton University, the many 18th century Tudor houses in the town, and also his space legos, Gordon aspired to be an architect, studying mechanical drawing and architectural drafting. Side-tracked at the end of high school, Gordon went on to attend Kenyon College in Ohio where he studied comparative religion and Asian Languages and Cultures. While at Kenyon, he was awarded highest honors in religion for his work on Namtar - Sacred Biography in Tibetan Buddhism.

In 1996 Gordon traveled to India, Nepal, and Tibet living in the Tibetan exile communities in Dharamsala, Katmandu, and Sikkhim. In India he was introduced to the Tibetan traditions of Thangka and mural painting, visiting many temples and monasteries throughout the region, photographing the historic wall paintings, learning the iconography, documenting the ongoing restoration work, and meeting many of the artists engaged in practicing the traditional Tibetan painting techniques.

In 2000, Gordon moved to New York City where he engaged in a rigorous study of artistic anatomy with William Weltman. He also met and studied with the Tibetan Thangka painter Tashi Palden, learning traditional approach to Thangka. Gordon also studied with Japanese artist and calligraphy master Kaz Tanahashi at the Village Zendo in Manhattan and at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, NY. In addition, he attended the Pratt Institute where he received a number of awards and honors for excellence. Following Pratt, Gordon studied at the Art Students League, apprenticing with abstract painter Frank O'Cain, learning many of the 14th and 15th century techniques of egg tempera and egg oil emulsions.

Currently, Gordon lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey. His works are exhibited in galleries in New York and New Jersey. He is part of an emerging group of international artists whose abstract works draw upon the global roots of painting, merging and fusing a diverse range of sources and traditions into an exciting contemporary abstract idiom.

he earliest memory I have of making art was when I was 8 or 9 years old. I was in 4th grade and one of our first projects in art class was to make a drawing of a book we had read during the summer. A typical boy, I had read some baseball book and proceeded to draw a bat and ball and maybe a few other objects. When I finished I was dejected and embarrassed by my effort. Sloppy, poorly drawn objects, placed randomly on the page. It wasn't really a picture, no composition. None of the objects related to the other pictorially or as a narrative. I remember looking at the drawing of the star artist in our class and becoming acutely aware of my failure as an artist. However, not to be discouraged, I sat down and did a drawing of mountains, sky, trees, a fence, and maybe a house. Totally invented–an invented landscape. When the teacher asked the book I had read, I lied and told her it was a book called "Green Mountains" that I had read when I visited my grandparents in Vermont. Despite my satisfaction with the drawing, I felt ashamed that I had made something up and lied about it. I avoided art for years.

Looking back I see the wisdom of that little boy. The playfulness and courage of invention. Invented forms, invented shapes. The joy of a squiggle. The effortless action of a gesture. I use them all in my work now. A process that begins with a doodle or a spontaneous automatic drawing in ink or an arrangement of torn pieces of paper. Through selection and repetition is transformed and begins to take on a life of its own–to tell a story; to communicate a feeling– like a poem or a piece of music.

Like a poem, my paintings begin with an observation, a feeling, a hunch or an idea, a memory and are then refined so that every color, every shape and form, every gesture is woven together. Like music my paintings begin with a theme or a phrase and evolve endlessly as an improvisational performance. Working with egg-oil emulsions, oil-resin varnishes, and oil-resin-beeswax, I build the paintings up in layers to create a luminosity or light that glows from within the painting. I make my own mediums as a way to connect with my materials, to appreciate them, to know them. Like taking apart a watch to put it back together to see the inside. Discovery, curiosity, playfulness.

Oil, Watercolor, Egg Tempera