Government Museum and Art Gallery to Showcase Paintings of Olivia Fraser

Chandigarh, 11^th November, 2016: The Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh is going to organize an exhibition of paintings by Olivia Fraser at the Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh in collaboration with Chandigarh Lalit Kala Academi which will continue till 30^th November 2016. The inauguration of the exhibition will be held on Wednesday, 16th November 2016 and will be inaugurated by Prof. B.N. Goswamy, Prof. Emeritus, Punjab University.

Fraser, who was born in London and raised in the Highlands of Scotland, has lived and worked in India since 1989. Deeply interested in the techniques and vocabulary of traditional Indian miniatures, she combines mineral and plant pigments and handmade paper with forms and ideas inspired by modern Western art.

Following in the footsteps of her kinsman, James Baillie Fraser who painted India, its monuments and landscape in the early 1800’s, Olivia set out to continue where her kinsman had left off, painting the architecture of Delhi and its people. James Baillie Fraser also commissioned local artists to paint what has become the famous ‘Fraser Album’ – the greatest masterpiece of Company School Painting portraying the different types of people and their jobs, crafts or castes against stark white backgrounds. This hybrid form of painting where Indian artists created works with mixed techniques and ideas from the East and West greatly influenced Olivia’s early work during the 1990s.

In 2005 she decided to study the traditional Indian miniature painting techniques under Jaipuri and Delhi masters, and now uses this in her work with its gem-like stone colours, its unique miniature brush work, and its elaborate decorative and burnished surfaces. Having been especially influenced by Nathdwarapichwai painting and early C19th Jodpuri painting, Olivia has been exploring its visual language, reaching back to an archetypal iconography strongly rooted in India's artistic and cultural heritage that can breach borders and be relevant to her twin life between East and West.

Her latest body of works is deeply rooted in her fascination with and practice of yoga and the ways in which yogic meditation involves visualizations of the garden, particularly the sahasrara or thousand-petaled lotus, which serves as a visual aid in reaching enlightenment. “The garden, an enclosed and cultivated area of landscape that’s formalized and acted upon, is fundamental to my work,” she says. “I take the vocabulary of landscape—trees, flowers, rivers, mountains and sky—and I deconstruct and reduce them to their essence.”

As well as her new works, the exhibition will offer a rare chance to see some of Fraser earlier works including ‘Golden Lotus’ (2008), ‘Shiva’ (2009), and ‘Krishna’s Garden’, (2008).

Olivia’s paintings have been shown in various galleries and art fairs around the world. They have also been included in well-known collections in India, UK, France, Belgium (Museum of Sacred Art), UAE, Singapore, Australia, China (China Arts Museum) and the USA. Glen Lowry, Director of MOMA has been an avid supporter and collector of her works since the very beginning. Olivia’s works were shown at the Venice Biennale in 2015.