Kathe Fraga’s nature narrative paintings are inspired by the romance of vintage Chinoiserie, layered with pattern, botanicals, color and hidden motifs. We live in a 110-year-old Bainbridge Island home built with barnacled beach rock and weathered grey shingles. The old fir floorboards of our home, milled from the surrounding trees, remind her on a daily basis of the love and gentle patina of time—the sound and scent of the forest.
With the flower’s decay and rebirth, they send their message to my art as I explore how the fresh beauty of the “new” evolves, over time, into something far more interesting and dramatic.Worn surfaces and distressed textures combine to create a sense of something soft and lovely and familiar; but yet, I feel the need to add a bold swath of color to add the modern and unexpected. It’s a resting place for the eye, a welcome peaceful voice as something reinvented emerges: gentle old meets dynamic new.

My art is influenced by the beauty and romance of old: vintage silky kimonos, hand-worked embroidery, lacquered little boxes, blocked wallpaper and panels from years ago, distressed with age, revealing a soft loveliness still…viewers see layered colors peeking out behind one another—pinks, blues, lavender—speckles of gold, a wisp of a faded blossom. Look for a small shy heart. A nestle of lovebirds. A French phrase. Each piece meant to be seen as part of a larger scene that’s been hidden away…until now.