FALL TIDES | 38X42 | Oil | 2010

West Fraser | Atlantic Moonrise | Oil on Linen | 30 x 36 Inches

27 September 2010

MEMO TO: Mark Mussari

ON PAINTINGS

FOR:  South West Art- Dec. 2010 issue

The painting Atlantic Moonrise is symbolic of this place I call home and of me as a painter. It encompasses the whole of my approach.

The setting is an island that my family once owned. It is now a South Carolina Heritage Trust Preserve. I go there to paint often. It holds old memories from native cultures and was witness to early European discovery.  It is a place of powerful inspiration for me. The painting tells the story of an ebb and flow of the tides and the universal connections that purse through the veins of all flora and fauna of this place.

The viewer is looking east as the sunset is casting long shadows over a hard marsh that leads to a small hummock, and the Atlantic ocean in the far distance.  The moon is rising as the tides flood the feeding grounds that support all the oceans. By utilizing compositional elements made from the shapes that are presented and molded by the late golden light, I present a picture to the viewer that holds their attention and welcomes a journey, not unlike my wandering the coast looking for the elements that I use to create paintings.

West Fraser | Support American Fisherman | Oil on Linen | 30 x 36 Inches

I have always been interested in the working waterfronts, found worldwide, though diminishing in number everywhere.

I will always be painting these places of authentic boating activity, they are almost like the coastal edges (transition zones) in landscape, the places that bind the dynamic of water and land.

Support American Fishermen was written on the walls as one enters the retail side of this shrimp dock. Not only, as with many times elsewhere in the past, was I beckoned to paint this setting in Mt. Pleasant, SC, but, that then it suddenly changed with a dry stack for small boats.  But being there, painting and talking to the owner helped to plant a seed for a small project that I called, Support American Fishermen, with which I created an awareness campaign for the Fisherman’s plight and also raised significant money for the SC Seafood Alliance for local marketing of local wild caught seafood.

I strongly believe that an artist role is not just to paint pictures, but we are to help people become more aware of their environment. The story behind this painting is a perfect example of the dynamics of finding places to paint, sometimes lead by serendipity.

So  I got the cover and my wife Helena is featured in the MY FAVES page.

SHE IS SO COOL!

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The following letter and Principles to Design  the Future, were sent to my High School- Savannah Country Day School, June 2009

As read to the 2009 Graduates-

WEST FRASER

Charleston

South Carolina

1^st June 2009

Dear SCDS Graduates,

To be honored as this year’s distinguished alumnus gives me great joy.  I smile in thinking that one just never knows who might succeed. My classmates from 1973 will probably agree, that being the Captain of the football team certainly did not give hints to a career as an artist. In order that I pursue just that, I had to grasp a boyhood dream and trust my nature.

I am not with you at your graduation today, because I am with my daughter driving to New Mexico. The timing is unfortunate and I apologize; yet I am thrilled to be spending overdue quality time with her. Just imagine three days with your father giving advice!

Please though indulge me a few minutes. Today is the only day that you are required to listen, as we your elders, try our best to share advice that is based on years of mistakes; all in a loving attempt to help you avoid the same. With that in mind, I felt it appropriate to organize my thoughts, using the Principles of Design as a guide.  I wish for you all, much success and luck in your future choices. Perhaps, my  Principles to Design the Future will help.

All my best to the class of 2009,

WEST FRASER

PRINCIPLES TO DESIGN THE FUTURE

West Fraser,  1 June  2009

Contrast

be tolerant of others  and their differences

Balance

time spent- at work, at play, with family and friends-

all are important

Rhythm

is your pulse and heartbeat – pursue your life now, there are no guarantees

Variety

keep an open mind and surround your self with people that introduce  new ideas

Repetition

the route to success- be diligent and apply yourself to all task with integrity

Emphasis

establish goals for your future now and  reassess them periodically- your subconscious will remind you as choices are contemplated and progress towards your goals will be made

Unity

is achieved when all principles are applied in an honest and thoughtful mix

Mystery

keep some for the challenge of life-  you will never figure it all out- just go out there and try to make the world better for us all

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THE FOLLOWING is a speech I gave in Ottawa Canada- 2008 – I was invited to present my paintings and talk about an interesting connection I have with the GROUP OF SEVEN Canadian painters, in conjunction with an  Ottawa Art Gallery celebration and gala in Ottawa, Nov. 2008. Ambassador Wilkins and his wife Susan had borrowed several paintings for the residence and from that we made some very interesting connections.

US Ambassadors Residence

17 November 2008

WEST FRASER

My wife Helena and I are very excited to be here again visiting Ambassador and Mrs. Wilkins, and I thank you both for this opportunity. Thank you Cristina Loeb and Whitney Fox for encouraging me to get on the plane. I am very pleased to have been asked to participate in this party for the Ottawa Art Gallery in celebration of The Firestone Collection of Canadian Art. The juxtaposition of my paintings with the several examples of the Group of Seven is a real honor for me, and I thank Director Constantinidi, Catherine Sinclair and the staff at the Ottawa Art Gallery, for their diligent and creative work in putting the visual presentation together.

Creativity seems to be the topic on the tips of our tongues these next few days and with that in mind I want to tell you a story.

One day, a young man was looking through the stacks of exciting and mostly unaffordable art books at Hacker Books in Manhattan. The young man was full of hopes and dreams, determined to be a fine artist. The reality of that idea was, the young man was battling self-doubt and trying to find a personal answer to the question of what it means to be an “ARTIST”. He found a small book titled TOM THOMSON, (by Blodwin Davies), a book about a Canadian artist who found his voice in the wilderness of Algonquin Park. Book in hand, the young man sat in the corner of the shop and read the book that was too expensive to take home.

At the time, the youngster was living in Bucks County Pennsylvania, where an American group of impressionist had made a mark on the art scene of the late 19th century and teens of the 20th. He was discovering the New Hope impressionist that included Edward Redfield, who in 1913 was the most award winning American painter of his time. Redfield was an artist painting his local landscape and community. The young artist was learning about an aspect of painting not taught in university art programs. Discovering the power and quality of regional schools of painting, an art, that was as good or even better than the European work he had learned about in Art History, was inspiring, and planted a seed, that would in time germinate.

The young painter was not a modernist, and he felt left out of the book of expectations for artist in the 1980”s. He had been raised in the American south, roaming the woods and waterways of the South Eastern Coast. Growing up on a large coastal Sea Island, hunting, fishing, and exploring, would be the learning experience that nurtured his right-brained dominant intuitive spirit. The young man was descended from Scots that had immigrated to North America at the onset of the industrial revolution, siblings finding homes in Georgia, New York, Nova Scotia and Ontario. The young painter from rural SC, wanted to find a purpose for the intuitive artistic spirit driving his life.

The more, I, read that book on Tom Thomson, the more I felt a kinship with him and his friends. Thomson had found a voice, in the North Woods, for his passion and creative spirit, the land he called “my country”. His innate and natural talent was nurtured by more accomplished artist such as AY Jackson , Arthur Lismer and Lauen Harris. They recognized in him an energy and native enthusiasm, which was perfect for their yearning to establish a unique Canadian art. Tom Thomson, and his friends explored and painted in the outdoors, discovering places that a kinship of spirit was felt. They were making art by living the Canadian experience.

The painters that later became known as the Group of Seven were responding to the universal collective thought of their time. The art world was changing fast, and painters in North America were anxious to find a relevant unique expression. In the United States, 1913, the Armory Show introduced Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon” and Marcel DuChamps “nude descending the stair case” both modern shocking pieces from Europe. In Canada, The Ontario Society of Artist annual awarded Thomson with a purchase prize for “outstanding distinction” for his painting titled “Northern Lake”. The titles alone should explain the difference between Canadian art and avant-garde European art of the time. The painters of the Group of Seven were anxious to make a new statement as Canadians. The philosophy of the group was to make art a way of life. They found inspiration in their back yards, towns and in the wilderness.

Inspired by what I had read, I found renewed confidence and a cause for my art spirit. My career had a strong start at the Grand Central Art Galleries in NYC, yet something was missing. I decided to return to my homeland to paint “my country”. I wanted to define the essence of place and find expression in painting, my, wild places that had never been painted. Over the past 30 years I have spent most of my time painting the place I went back to rediscover. I am often painting in spots that are only accessible by boat, or are wild places far from development. My homeland landscape is comprised of waterways, expansive estuaries that are the breeding grounds for the oceans, and jungles of dense maritime forest of palmettos, cedars and knarrly oaks that spread like arms of octopus, dripping with Spanish moss. It is a rough humid and wild terrain that held at bay the early European explorers and certainly painters, for a long time. It is the place where I have found my artistic voice.

Not unlike the Group of Seven artist that painted Georgian Bay or the Arctic and Rocky mountains, I too have regularly expanded my search, and as they discovered, I too find a dwindling access to the wild landscape. Ninety yeas ago, AY Jackson sent a message to a great Canadian painter, Clarence Gagnon, asking “ Why don’t you come home and paint Quebec before it is all turned to garages and gas stations.”

Now that I have been invited here tonight and have revisited the source of our common thread,

I ponder what might have been said as parting words between my kinsman Shannon Fraser and Tom Thomson, at Mowatts Lodge, on that fateful mid-summer day in 1917.

As I have looked back on the journey of that Young man from South Carolina, it is becoming apparent that all of our lives are intertwined and influenced by unknown persons and circumstances that transcend international borders. I am struck by the poignant reality of history repeating itself. If my life’s work, sparked by an intuitive drive, can have any impact, then, perhaps it is helping my audience recognize the value of this place we all call home. Our collective conscious and universal knowledge are real, and I strongly believe that the intuitive mind properly nurtured and developed, can become the force of creative thinking needed to solve the problems that we all face in our near future.

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Invitation for exhibition at

Support American Fishermen

My favorite painters were European and American artists working at their best in the turn of the 20th century. This was before the Avant Garde Modernist changed the visual vocabulary.

Industrialization was catapulting cultures into transition. New scientific information was changing world views. The science of color created a shift in the way artists made paintings and many used the new information to paint dramatically beautiful paintings.

These light filled canvasses often captured pieces of their culture threatened by change occurring as the dawn of modernism approached.

I too feel a change in the air. In this dawn of global change due to environmental degradation and economic globalization, I find myself wanting to capture the remaining culture of the people plying the coastal waters that I have used as a back drop for the bulk of my life’s work.

We in America have developed laws that protect and maintain sustainable fisheries, yet foreign seafood is readily available for much less money and often from countries with no fisheries laws or that ignores international agreements.

My new series “Support American Fishermen” is about a culture taken for granted and endangered. We currently have fishermen willing to harvest for our tables, yet they are struggling to keep their businesses. Many that I have spoken with tell the reoccurring theme, “the fish are there, but I can’t compete with cheap imports.” That is a snapshot of the fishermen’s plight. Yet, they are also losing commercial waterfronts. We will loose our local seafood harvest if we drive the fisherman away.

The American fisherman symbolizes the health of our oceans. Like the American eagle was, our fishermen are endangered. If we lose them, we will ring the death toll for our oceans.

To paint these pictures and communicate these issues is the answer to my personal questions, “What can I do?”

My wife, Helena and I are pledging to donate 5% of the sales of this series of paintings to the South Carolina Seafood Alliance. As the American Bald Eagle symbolized an ailing environment and was brought back from the brink of extinction, the American Fishermen too needs our protection.

What Can You Do?

The Next Generation 20x30 oil 2007

I was inspired to paint this painting after a lobstering experience out of Vinalhaven Island, ME.  Steve Ally invited Robert , our son, and I to go lobstering. I refilled bait bags,smelly!, all day and enjoyed watching Robert, then 12, learn to work in unison on the aft deck. We pulled in over 500 pounds of keepers and released several large lobsters as depicted.

Fixin',Strippin' and Leavin' 24x30 oil 2007

I was at Cherry Point Seafood talking to a fisherman from Georgetown the day I painted this. He was Stirring a trawler of useful equipment and was planning to scuttle the boat offshore. He couldn’t sell it and had 2 others. Shrimping was not paying. Another fisherman was repairing his trawler, hoping for a better season and the trawler depicted had been abandoned on the shore, hence the title.

Support American Fishermen 30x36 oil 2006

At Shem creek.