Paradigm Gallery + Studio is pleased to present The female gaze, a solo exhibition featuring the newest body of work from painter Katherine Fraser. Although Fraser’s career has been hallmarked by her precise technical skills and evocative backgrounds, The female gaze launches a new chapter in her practice of forming emotionally expressive figures in abstract environments. The exhibition encompasses several newly evolved facets of Fraser’s practice, from new painting methods to cultivating strong bonds with other artists that manifest in the work. Fraser makes prominent female figures in varying degrees of form, forever fleeting and unable to be measured by societal concepts and perceptions. As Fraser continues to push the capabilities of oil painting and traditional figuration, she also pushes herself to dive into new genres both within her practice and her identity.

Fraser states that this collection is the most emotionally honest to herself as a painter and as a person navigating a mid-life recalibration, a period seemingly unspoken of, yet universally understood among women. Fraser admires and paints women who are actively redefining their personal identities and relationships while also casting off the expectations set by men and familial duties. The exhibition hones in on the powerful bond women have with one another, especially as they witness and support each other in their pursuits. Currently, Fraser is experiencing this bond in her personal life as she opens up her studio practice more with her peers, utilizing her community as she shares her work with other women painters.

Fraser welcomes change and experimentation as a vital part of her personal growth as an artist. In this collection, she explores how to paint an emotionally expressive figure without full faces or with only gestures of the arms, like in Carry it forward. Additionally, she is even overturning her entire composition process. Before, she would begin with a figure and then construct a background but for this exhibition, she starts each piece as an abstract painting. Fraser follows an intuitive process where she channels emotion and mystery into a new world using splatters, swoops, and even lifting and turning the canvas to where paint can pool and drip. Once her colorscape is realized, Fraser imagines the kind of figure that would exist in that world, and how she would choose to present herself. The result is an array of conscious and complex characters breathing, feeling, thinking, and living poeticly within their own worlds.

As most of the exhibition highlights the nurturing one gains through female relationships, Fraser has also found convalescence within the inward gaze. This self-reflection is evident as the artist will be exhibiting self-portraits of herself for the first time in her career and lets go of theatrical settings and props. As an artist, Fraser critically examines the trajectory of her practice and is inspired to apply her established skills to new realms. Fraser invites visitors to go on this journey of experimentation with her as they are immersed in the joy and play throughout the exhibition. She hopes people of all ages will feel seen as the figures grapple with the toils of defining their identity while also releasing the inhibitions that are thrust upon them.

Katherine Fraser’s paintings depict moments of quiet reflection and insight, of wonder, vulnerability, yearning, determination, humility, strength, and growth. She sees a duality in every moment, and beauty in the tension of opposing emotions existing in a single facial expression. As every person and every experience is multifaceted, every painting is meant to express a dimensional idea. She is fascinated by the mutability of memory, by the way emotions can shape perception, and by the way we unconsciously create narratives to understand our experience and explain our identities.

Fraser paints out of her sincere desire to respect, express, and share the tender qualities that unite us. Compassionately and with a generous heart, she seeks to portray our continual need to reckon expectations with truth, and the struggles we endure to feel satisfaction with our choices. Her goal is not just to make aesthetically beautiful paintings, but to create works that touch and resonate with the complexity of real-world experience.

Fraser has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States. She is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and of the University of Pennsylvania. As a student, she received the Thomas Eakins Painting Prize, the Cecelia Beaux Portrait Prize, and the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Travel Award, among others. Since graduating in 2002, she has received awards including the Lucy Glick Award and the Victor Klein Family Award. Her work has been published in Studio visit magazine, Philadelphia weekly, Die blumen die frauen, The fertile source, New American paintings, The Southern review, The best of American oil painting, and more. Her work may be found in many permanent and private collections nationally and abroad.