I have been making paintings about human experience and relationships for the past 15 years. This comes from an interest in human psychology and the frustrated languages by which we try to connect. Painting is probably the most frustrated means of all.

I made Goose Chase: All of us Together with you Nowhere (2015) after a trip to the Azores Islands, Portugal where my kids and I (11 and 13) went looking for traces of our ancestor Antonio de Fragar. Antonio left the Azores in 1850 as a 12-year old boy on an American whaling ship. He was twice shipwrecked and saw most of his fellow crew eaten by Fijian cannibals. The painting collapses time and space and Penny and Hugo, who were roughly the age of Antonio when he left the Azores, are momentarily united with the only photographic image of we have of him.

Julie Fragar – March 2016