Adrianus Fraza

        Adrianus Fraza was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam. He was drawn to art at a young age, expanding a passion that never left him. Curiously his schooling in the Netherlands was of a technical nature. He learned to work with metal, wood, and commercial painting. In his late teens, he left the Netherlands and in time his travels would take him around the world.

        He studied Tibetan Tanka painting in Kopan, a Tibetan monastery in Katmandu, Nepal. He lived and worked as a hippy painter in Goa, India. He studied among artists in Revivim, a Kibutz in Israel. He immigrated to the USA in 1979. Adrianus spent time in California and after two years out west finally settled down in Indiana, where he still lives, with his wife Peggy, and his two teenaged sons.

        Adrianus Fraza's Art is not easy to associate with one classification. Very emotional and European in character, he likes to see himself as an abstract painter with a strong expressionistic influence. His Art is chaotic, intriguing, and ever changing, yet poetic and beautiful. Fraza's work is intoxicating and certainly complicated to understand, with all the contradictions that are built into it.

        A feverish restlessness, with an emphasis on the painting process rather than on the creation of a serene, self-contained form, it is as he will admit, a Dutch psyche that he shares with painters like William de Kooning, Karel Appel, and Otto Dix. We can see the influence of these great masters in his work.

         Adrianus opened his studio to the public in 2004, and has participated in the Terre Haute Swope Art Gallery's Juried Exhibition in 2006 and the Art Fest of Sullivan County Art Guild in 2007.

        You can find his work online by visiting his web page or by making an appointment to visit his studio in Clinton, Indiana.

Copyright 2008