After Print

    October 1 - 22, 2011
    At 2260 Oak Bay Avenue

    Opening Reception
    Saturday, October 1, 2011   1 pm – 5 pm
    Doug Fraser in attendance.
    Elizabeth Ely, harpist;  Karel Roessingh, pianist

    Douglas Fraser was born in Lethbridge, Alberta. He attended the Alberta College of Art & Design in Calgary where he studied graphic design and illustration. After four years at ACAD he moved to New York for graduate school, attaining a Masters degree, MFA, from the School of Visual Arts. Without missing a beat, Doug became an award winning illustrator, working for an array of international clients including The New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek, Business Week, Wirtschafts Woche (Germany), Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Motor Trend, NHL, IBM, and Levis.

    His technique originally involved traditional media of oils on canvas and evolved over the years to incorporate digital aspects both exclusive and combined with paint.

    After moving back to Calgary in the early 90's, he was approached by the ACAD to teach and accepted a part-time position.

    Doug has sat on several juries and spoken in numerous cities including New York and Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited in the US, England, Japan and Canada. Memberships include the prestigious Society of Illustrators (NY) for the past eighteen years, the advisory panel of ICON5, the American Illustrator Partnership (founding member status), CAPIC and the Graphic Artists Guild of New York.

    Douglas has lived in New York, Toronto, Calgary, and now Victoria.

    After a long successful career as an illustrator, the desire to create works of a different nature and purpose began to surface.

    Building on the technical knowledge developed professionally as a visual communicator in the graphics world for 27 years, he began to experiment once again, without the burden of client and other constraints. This freedom enabled Doug to move beyond his past and develop a body of work which is more personal in subject.

    This new body of paintings strongly links artistic influences with personal observations. Influences affecting structure include pop, abstract and figurative art as well as contemporary graphics. A two dimensional quality is embraced and the construction becomes as important as the subject. The subject, which is somewhat banal in tone, is derived from his own first hand experience. It considers that which is usually only seen in passing, but is now observed more closely. (By observing, and studying the subject by eye,) Intense visual study precedes a process of disassembling and then reconstruction. Throughout, there's an internal dialogue between the objective and the subjective. The experiential challenge of this process has Douglas tracing the edges of where the figurative meets abstraction.

Doug Fraser