Patrick Fraser is a British-born American visual artist whose work combines photography, painting, drawing, and writing to explore the relationship between people, place, and memory.
It may be at a tennis club in Philadelphia, a roadside in Connecticut, my wife or family, a village in Portugal, or the quiet edge of a parking lot. I arrive with a camera, but also with a sketchbook and paints. I walk. I sit. I draw. I photograph. I write. Time becomes part of the process.
I have never been interested in documenting places simply as they appear. What draws me is the life that accumulates within them; the conversations, rituals, histories, and small moments that reveal how people belong to one another and to the landscapes they inhabit. The camera records what I see; drawing and painting ask me to stay longer, to look more carefully. Together, these ways of working deepen my understanding of a place and the people who shape it.
My projects often unfold over months or years and combine photography, painting, drawing, and writing into a single body of work. Whether I am photographing cars, mannequins, tennis clubs, or the Portuguese countryside, the subject itself is only the point of departure. Beneath each project is the same enduring curiosity: how ordinary places and people carry extraordinary human stories.
In an age increasingly shaped by speed, automation, and distraction, my work is an act of attention. It is a way of slowing down long enough to notice what might otherwise be overlooked, and of searching for the quiet traces of humanity that remain in the places we share.
Exhibitions
Notes From LA, New Photography, 2025
Forgotten Places, LoosenArt, Rome 2023
Art of Elysium, Los Angeles 2017
MOPLA Photo Book Exhibition 2017, Ambulantes
Smile, Orange County Great Park Gallery 2016
Sparce, Tiny Gallery Venice CA 2016
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery London 2015
Threshold, Tiny Gallery Venice CA 2015
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery London 2013
Quake, Quixote Studios Los Angeles 2011
Near & Far East Los Angeles 2010
L8S ANG3LES Anneberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles 2009
In-Famous, The Lab Gallery Culver City CA, portraits 2008
Lectures
Indiana University, School of Art, Architecture + Design
Center for Integrative Photographic Studies, 2018
Selected Press
SportinArt
aCurator
aCurator
LA Times
Self Publish be Happy
The Arts Desk, Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2013, National Portrait Gallery
Books
South of Lisbon, Wensum 2026
Ambulates, 2018
Vail Dance, Material Press 2016
Grants & Awards
Artful Initiative Grant, CT 2023 winner
Art Education
BA Hons Fine Art Major, Oxford Brookes University, England
Art Foundation Course, Norwich University of the Arts
Born in Norwich, England. Lives and works in Ridgefield CT.
Book Foreword Text: South of Lisbon, 2026 by Faye Arthurs, Brooklyn NY
At first glance, Patrick Fraser’s impressionistic vacation journal South of Lisbon conjures the lazy summer
pace of Portugal’s capital city and sun-dappled coastline. Fraser interpreted his experiences through
a variety of media, in ways both focused and free. Indian ink jottings and snaps of splashing beachgoers
demonstrate a casual appreciation of the Costa da Caparica region, while his riotously colorful acrylic
pieces and laconic prose poems belie a deeper consideration. Upon closer examination, what seemed like
an easy-going travelogue is really a formally inventive exploration of time and place.
In this beautiful collection, Patrick subverts the conventions of stasis and motion. He finds kineticism
in the weathered doorways and desiccated vegetation of Portugal’s unchanging Alentejo countryside. He
homes in on Beja’s ancient castle keep, silently stalwart yet cacophonously mossy. Conversely, he depicts
the stolidity of linens baking in the oppressive Lisbon heat. Though few concepts
convey breezy oscillation as well as laundry airing on a line, Patrick shoots his
sheets as if their wrinkles are set in stone—as if they are as onerous as the
bells he describes drooping from the necks of the village cows.
In South of Lisbon, Patrick portrays the dynamism of inanimate objects as
well as the perpetual calm of scenes forever in flux. In one of my favorite diptychs,
frenetic brushstrokes are juxtaposed with the tranquil repose of rocks on a shore.
Though the craggy pebbles are even in that captured
moment actively transforming through exposure to
sun and surf, they embody the eternity of the natural
world instead. Magically, it is the immutable landscape
sketch that appears to be dancing.