NEIL FRAZER

Frazer was born in Canberra and immigrated to New Zealand with his family in 1965. He graduated from the University of Canterbury, School of Fine Arts in 1985, attending the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture in 1986 and completing post-graduate study at the College of Sydney Fine Arts in 2000. Frazer’s impasto and large-scale gestural paintings, and his treatment of the picture plane as a unified and evenly treated surface have invited frequent comparison with Abstract Expressionism. However, of primary concern to Frazer are the materials and processes of painting.

His work from 2005 has been characterised by a commitment to figuration with a series of transcendent, painterly landscape that could only have been realised through his knowledge and skill as a formalist painter. Frazer has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the 1992 Francis Hodgkins Fellowship at the University of Otago.

His work is held in the collection of the Dunmoochin Foundation, Melbourne and the Christchurch Art Gallery.