Jo Fraser
20 year old, Edinburgh- born artist Jo Fraser was first educated at George Watson’s College where she won many prizes and bursaries for her art.
In 2005, she entered ITV’s ‘A Brush With Fame’, a televised search for Britain’s best amateur portrait painter and won the Scottish final with paintings of dancer, Wayne Sleep and actor, Malcolm Hebden. She came within the top 3 in the National grand final for the series with her painting of GMTV anchorman, Eamonn Holmes.
She now approaches the final year of her degree in Fine Art at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee.
Fraser has always shouldered a fascination for the appreciation of the human form and expression. While her recent work seems to have fallen almost entirely within the realm of portraiture, she is reluctant to conform to the categorization of a ‘portrait artist’. Instead, she prefers to concentrate on a personal injection and a painterly approach. The result can appear playful, or indeed can demand a psychological analysis of her sitters and their relationships.
It is these relationships in which Fraser is interested, and in this collection of work forming her first solo exhibition, she works predominantly with younger female sitters. These sitters are captured honestly and seductively and are each driven by a concept of spontaneity and fleeting moments of expression which reveal their character.
