Jean Alexander Frater Experiments With Materials To Redefine The Boundaries Of Painting

Photo: Jean Alexander Frater in her studio, surrounded by her exploration of painting and sculpture, where materials transcend conventions to take new shapes.

Breaking Traditions, Exploring New Forms

Jean Alexander Frater redefines painting by pushing material limits, blending art histories, and integrating philosophy into her innovative explorations. Her work exists between categories, merging painting, sculpture, and abstraction.

Jean Alexander Frater’s artistic journey is nothing short of extraordinary. As an artist who courageously redefines the boundaries of painting, Frater invites viewers to reconsider everything we think we know about this centuries-old medium. Her innovative practice transforms paint, canvas, and the rectilinear frame into vehicles of experimentation, turning the familiar into the unexpected. With her work elegantly balanced between categories—painting and sculpture, traditional craft and contemporary abstraction—Jean creates compositions that challenge artistic conventions while maintaining a sense of poetic harmony.

What makes Jean’s work so compelling is her ability to weave together materials, traditions, and histories with a profound sense of curiosity and intellect. Guided by her background in philosophy, she pushes the limits of her materials, deconstructing and reassembling them to explore themes of embodiment, labor, and transformation. Her sculptures and paintings hum with an inherent tension—the interplay between the constraints of her materials and the infinite possibilities of her imagination.

Having exhibited her work internationally and contributed to the arts community as the director of the nonprofit artist-run space, Material, Jean Alexander Frater’s influence reaches far beyond her studio walls. Her thoughtful approach to collaboration and community building is a testament to her belief that art is as much about connection as it is about creation. In this insightful interview, she opens up about the process, philosophy, and driving forces behind her evocative body of work. We are thrilled to spotlight this remarkable artist and celebrate her ever-evolving contributions to the art world.

What materials do you work with, and how do they shape your creative process?

My materials are limited to paint, canvas, and the rectilinear frame, which I define as the core materials of painting. Paradoxically, I find that these limitations open up new possibilities. This is where my experimentation begins—by deconstructing these materials and their traditional roles. 

In Navy Bead, the pictorial image within the rectangular frame is translated into itself as a sculpture, creating a doubling—or even a re-doubling—of the image. The painting’s image is reinterpreted as a physical object that exists off to the side. The sculptural aspect of the work emerges as a pod-like, hanging form composed of layers of canvas, wrapped and coiled around itself and the frame. This technique is a nod to my many years of working with ceramics, particularly coil-building.

“Paradoxically, I find that these limitations open up new possibilities.” –Jean Alexander Frater

In both painting and sculpture, there is a sense of satisfaction in the manipulation of materials, but also a limit to how far they can be pushed. Through these two practices, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of material limits and how they shape the work. Pushing these materials to their boundaries, whether in painting or sculpture, and then allowing them to stabilize, is a crucial part of my creative process.

How do you integrate different histories, traditions, and languages into your art, and what drives this exploration?

All of my paintings incorporate a hybrid presence, where I consider the relationship between painting and sculpture, painting and weaving, or, as in my recent piece Escaping the Beauty Instrument, painting and ceramics. I begin a painting by selecting one sketch from many, then move through stages using different materials. Decisions are made within each medium without trying to predict the final piece, allowing each material to reveal itself and contribute its own voice. Each translation transforms the original idea, complicating and abstracting it in the process.

The images take you through some of these stages:  from a loose sketch to color-field painting, and ultimately to the final painting. What begins as a body evolves into a landscape, then takes its final form. To me, this final iteration looks like many things: a pitcher (vessel) with a handle (arm), and even evokes a harp. The title emerges from this morphing process—moving from body to vessel to musical instrument—and reflects my exploration of the gaze, beauty, and the attempt to escape into abstraction, or from abstraction into form.

I see all of my work as existing between categories. My exploration is driven by the desire to discover what something can become through the journey of material and language. 

How does your background in philosophy inform your work and the themes you explore in your paintings?

Ultimately, my experiments are about breaking free from fixed definitions—allowing the traditional “rules” of painting to be bent, shifted, and at times, completely re-imagined. The result is a process where materiality, structure, and context collapse into each other, creating a new kind of artwork that is both painting and something else.

My undergraduate studies in Philosophy opened up new ways to think about the relationship between body, labor, gender, and materiality. After concentrating on ceramics for 10 years, I went to graduate school, where painting became the primary means and material through which I could stage these concerns.

What has your experience as a BOLT resident in Chicago taught you about your artistic practice and community engagement?

The BOLT residency with the Chicago Artists Coalition lasted for one year, and rather than isolating me from my regular environment, it was fully integrated into it. There were 12 post-grad artists from diverse backgrounds, working in various disciplines, who shared this space and time together. We had adjacent studios, scheduled solo exhibitions, critique sessions, studio visits with other art professionals, and community events like dinners.

This rigorous environment fostered both creative work and community building. The experience deepened my desire to continue engaging with my larger community, which eventually led me to create my own artist-run space, Material.

Escaping the Beauty Instrument

Jean Alexander Frater’s Escaping the Beauty Instrument (2024) is a masterful exploration of abstraction and materiality. Measuring 60 x 56 inches, this bold work merges painting and sculpture, blurring traditional boundaries. Frater’s layered and deconstructed approach transforms canvas and paint, offering a textured, tactile composition with intertwining organic forms. The piece evokes movement and depth, with every element engaging in a dialogue of balance and transformation. This artwork reflects Frater’s dedication to pushing the limits of visual language, turning the act of painting into a multidimensional, philosophical exploration of form and meaning.