© the artist. Photo credit: University of Aberdeen
Painter and teacher, born in Aberdeen. He studied at Gray’s School of Art there, 1958–62, completing a postgraduate year. A Travelling Scholarship took him to France and Italy. Fraser won a number of awards including the RSA Guthrie Award, the Sir William Gillies Bequest allowing him to travel in Egypt. Fraser joined the staff of Gray’s School and became senior lecturer in charge of painting.
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From the mid-1960s he had a steady stream of solo exhibitions, figurative and abstract work, including 57 Gallery, Edinburgh; Sheffield University; Compass Gallery, Glasgow; Aberdeen Art Gallery; Talbot Rice Art Centre, Glasgow, 1987; and Cyril Gerber Fine Art, Glasgow, 1995. In that exhibition Fraser showed small paintings and drawings intended to engage the viewer’s imagination and which were “open to interpretation”, tinged with a Surrealist oddness. Among Fraser’s administrative roles were serving on Grampian Hospitals and Health Care Art Project Committee, and on the councils of the SSA, Aberdeen Arts Society, RSA and RSW. He won the inaugural Noble Grossart Prize in 1996.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)