* "White Fish Seller" by Priscilla Frazer, Laguna Beach Artist, 1907-1973

Peso Priced Item. "White Fish Seller" by Priscilla Jane Frazer, Laguna Beach Artist, 1907-1973  
An important work in acrylic by this accomplished Laguna Beach artist who had a love for Lake Chapala.  Size: 36" by 50", painted on masonite.  White fish were once common in Lake Chapala, now, the locals say, they are extinct in the lake.
Award-winning Californian artist Priscilla Frazer spent a decade in Chapala 
By Tony Burton (info@sombrerobooks.com); all rights reserved.
Priscilla (“Pris”) Jane Frazer was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, on 14 May 1907 and died at the age of 66 on May 17, 1973. The family relocated to California when Frazer was a child and she graduated from the University of Southern California before gaining a Masters degree at Long Beach State College. She studied art at the Jepson Art Institute and Chouinard Art Institute. Among her art teachers were Hester Lauman (South Pasadena High School art department), Eliot O’Hara, Rex Brandt, Phil Dike and Lucille Douglas. Frazer also studied art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, in Oxford (U.K.), and with James Pinto at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 1955. Priscilla Frazer, who never married, spent most of her career in southern California, living in Laguna Beach and teaching at Orange Coast College. She traveled widely, including visits to Europe, India, the Far East, North Africa and Spain. Frazer was already very familiar with Mexico before she built a home in Chapala Haciendas in 1963. Thereafter she spent several months each year in Chapala, painting and occasionally exhibiting her work in the area. In November 1966, she held a solo exhibition and sale of 50 paintings at the Casa de la Cultura in Guadalajara as a benefit for Chest Clinic #4 of Mexico's National Campaign against Tuberculosis. The show was formally opened by the Jalisco State Governor, Francisco Medina Ascensio. Frazer donated all fifty works (worth an estimated 200,000 pesos) to the campaign, and the organizers deliberately set modest prices to ensure rapid sales. A contemporary reviewer praised "her latest oils and acrylics" for their "beautiful, glowing translucent colors reminiscent of stained glass (an original technique)", as well as the "great strength and depth" of her watercolors. Frazer was an active member of the California Watercolor Society, Long Beach Art Association and the Los Angeles Art Association. During her career, Frazer had more than a dozen solo exhibitions of her work, ranging from Washington D.C. across the country to Los Angeles and Laguna Beach in California. Her major shows included the California Watercolor Society (1930-33); the Laguna Beach Art Association (1930s); the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts (1939, 1961). In January 1970, a few months before setting off with a friend on an extended trip to India (which she had visited 41 years earlier) and Kashmir, Frazer held a one-person exhibit of watercolors and collages at the American Legion in Chapala. Later that year, in August, Frazer was honored by the Board of the California National Water Color Society which selected one of her works for a star-studded show at the National Academy in New York of 70 works (by 70 different artists) from across the entire country. Copyright 2017, Tony Burton; all rights reserved.