The Inspiration to Write Essays

I'm writing some essays for a couple publications here on the leather bucket couch under some hopeful cranked up dimmer spots.  Somehow I feel like the brighter thery are, the more likely I am to want to write.  Previous BP Travel Award essays are strewn open around me too, like, for good energy, you know?  I know it's not just me who settles down to write in the morning and reaches 17:28 having triumphantly expunged all appropriate essay subject matter by filling my brain with everything else instead.

Anyway, I meant to digitally pen down a week or so ago about a shoot I did last week with a good mate and awesome photographer Angus Behm.  Some really nice photos came from this studio visit and I've kept myself from showing them all.  I sort of want to keep the painting for The BP till it's finished.  Check out Angus's work here www.angusbehm.co.uk

Studio detail © Angus Behm 2012

Mixing a palette with a view of the Peruvian wall © Angus Behm 2012

© Angus Behm 2012

© Angus Behm 2012

Sitting with the Quechua Weavers.  A preview of the painting unfinished © Angus Behm 2012

The Studio © Angus Behm 2012

I'm also digging the work of Ryan Mosley today.  For the folkish, quirk of the carnivalesqe and for the colour and paint quality.  And the equally quirky musical brilliance of the Stockholm based music duo Niki and The Dove.

Ryan Mosley - Emperor Butterfly

Blue, Innit.

Because sometimes a shot of a working palette is just the ticket people.

January Newsletter

Side note:  If you wish to be kept up to date with studio processes, new works, exhibitions and exciting news, enter your email address here: Jo Fraser Updates

From The Studio of The Artist | January 2012

Happy New Year to you all.


As work continues on the paintings I am exhibiting at The BP Portrait Award exhibition in June, It seems there is little headspace retained for much else. I aim to finish the Peru work by mid-March when it will be taken down to London.


A little heads up to those who are interested in reading an insight into my residence in Peru - the February 2012 issue of Artists & Illustrators Magazine has published a three-page spread brandishing, for the majority, my own words. Because... as those affiliated with the world of publishing will know, one’s personal style of writing with which one might perhaps see as another creative outlet and thus have considered such things as word flow and tone... in the hands of another is often edited and perhaps tinged with a slightly corny hue not unlike that of a cheery bright sock among an academic white wash.

Nevertheless, It is an informative, fun article that yes, I have written, and there are lots of pictures.

Another bit of news - I have just today revised the Terms and Conditions for the Shop section of my website, which provides the platform for purchasing my artwork online through my website. Once verified and put into codey goodness by my Site Guru, it will go live and I will send out a newsletter to inform you all that the time is nigh when thy pennies can be digitally exchanged for original paintings and prints.



Lastly, I have had many people asking about a publication of my work. It has been said before - It is happening, and will most likely happen in the first half of 2012 and, you guessed it, will be available to buy through the jofraser website.

Until next newsletter,



All the very best to you lovely people and stay in touch

Jo Fraser

Más Dibujos

Canvas delivery

The canvas arrived today.  The architraves had to come off the door in order to fit it into the building.  I actually held my breath till it was inside the studio.

I also worked more into the drawing I've started of a little girl from the Patacancha Valley.

November Newsletter

Side note:  If you wish to be kept up to date with studio processes, new works, exhibitions and exciting news, 
enter your email address here: Jo Fraser Updates

From The Studio of The Artist | November 2011

A very warm hello and happy November to every one.

Though  (Yes literates, I will start with a 'though'.  It's my style, my swagga...)
THOUGH I endeavored, many moons ago now, to send out monthly updates on my practice, It's perhaps fairly evident I have not.  It's one of those things, I tell myself - some are built like newsletter-producing-artist machines and others find that they end up sixteen months down the line with a feint yet nonetheless present niggle, akin to a tiny, persistent mosquito, that there was something they needed to do for all to be well in the digital-networking world.

My mozzy waned and gave up I think.  Collapsed lungs.
But here I am, with enough of my literary inspiration aligned with my digital networking energies to bash at this baby head on.  Brace yourselves.

Some of you might know this, others might not - I have been living in Peru for the past two months.  In June of this year, I won the BP Portrait Travel Award for my proposal to travel to The Sacred Valley in Peru and live with an indigenous community of weavers in the mountains of the Patacancha Valley.  These two months blew my mind and frequently had me gagging for a studio and a good sized canvas.  I could visualize paintings before I’d even started them, which is a departure from my usual ‘unfold..itive’...(there, I just invented a word) methods in painting. 

I collected film, textiles, photos, sketches, notes, diaries and sketchbooks (of which one is still God-knows-where in a Liman Taxi) and have begun the process of creating an 86” x 109” canvas painting.  The canvas arrives from London on Friday.

So ladies and gentlemen, and all the rest,...the development of said painting, to be exhibited in the BP Portrait Award 2012 at The National Portrait Gallery in London along with supporting work, will be documented as best as a non-digital-networking-artist-machine can, right here on my blog page 
Check back frequently to follow the progress.

All the very best to you lovely people and stay in touch

Jo Fraser

The Return

So THE easel never came.  Well not until THREE of them arrived a week after i'd left.  Hilarious times... here's me making do with a shitty cheap little table easel (which served me quite well.  True story) while three bloodyexpensive easels are piled into a neat little Jenga-like formation in the corner of my mother's office.  Nice work delivery company. NOT.

I was unable to log in to my journal from Peruvian computers.  Truth be told, I cant claim to have tried that hard but I tried once or twice and they say it's the sentiment that counts.  Yes they do.  Anyway, I made a tiny promise to myself - and might possibly have also pencilled down on a paper scrap somewhere that when I returned to Edinburgh, I would write a succession of blog stories about Peru and Patacancha

Here is an excerpt from my sketchbook around the time I was passing through Cuzco for the first time.

View accross the Plaza de Armas, Cuzco 5/9/11

And a photo of the Patacancha Valley, where I stayed with a family within the village.  More on this later

Patacancha Valley