| When you first meet Doug Fraser you might imagine he’s on his way downtown to a business meeting. In fact, he’s in Calgary to pick up the Board of Governors’ Alumni Award of Excellence presented to him by the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD).
Wearing a natty sports jacket and carrying a briefcase, Fraser would easily fit in with any group of up-and-coming executives. Instead, the 43-year-old Lethbridge-born illustrator works alone on the top floor of his Victoria, B.C. home that he shares with his wife.
Fraser counts among his clients Newsweek, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and Time magazine. Not bad for a guy whose dream to become an artist was solidified at age 13 after his sister brought him to Calgary for an open house at ACAD.
"I was really jazzed at that point," says Fraser. And that youthful enthusiasm sustained him while living in Lethbridge and thinking about the day he could leave to study art.
"My dad was a civil engineer so there was no way he was going to support me to go to art school," recalls Fraser.
Much to his father’s chagrin, Fraser captured a high school art award and a coveted scholarship, placing his dream within reach. Fraser studied at ACAD from 1980 to 1984 and the world opened up to him there under the tutelage of instructors Ron Ponech and Rik Zak.
"They (took) my ‘I want to be an illustrator’ vagueness and gave it focus," says Fraser. From there, stints in New York City and Toronto helped Fraser to refine a style of illustration he calls "comic-book social realism."
With bold colours and angular shapes, many of his illustrations are reminiscent of the propaganda posters created by the governments of China and the former Soviet Union to champion the cause of the proletariat.
Fraser admits that as a young man politics informed more of his work, but as he matures his interest has turned to humorous themes.
"When you’re young, you take yourself very seriously," he says. "I want to have fun with it now."
But Fraser admits part of his shift to humour is also the result of the North American publishing industry moving away from stories that are deemed too controversial or political in the post-9-11 era. "There’s conservatism in publishing right now," he says. "It’s market-driven publishing."
That new reality hasn’t stopped Fraser from continuing to receive high-end freelance assignments working on everything from comics to corporate identity packages. "I’ve been very lucky," he says.
And once in a while, Fraser is still lucky enough to be given an assignment that has social relevance. He recently completed an illustration for The New York Times in support of an article examining how police resources are distributed on an inequitable basis in that city.
"It shows a cop walking down the middle of a street," says Fraser." On one side is a rundown neighbourhood, a slum, and on the other side is the Upper East Side."
So, while Fraser might look like he belongs in a downtown office building, he’s still the kid from Lethbridge with a comic-book sense of humour and a socialist’s heart. |
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