WIT AND WISDOM

An exhibition of Scott Fraser’s most recent still lifes is on view now at Quidley & Company in Nantucket

- JOHN O'HERN

When Scott Fraser’s father was in his teens, he caught a bass and had it mounted. Years later it hung in his office. Today it hangs in Fraser’s studio. The pride of the young fisherman is now the pride of the artist, appearing in paintings from time to time and always reminding him of his late father.

In 1992, he painted Three Fishermen, now in the collection of Denver Art Museum. The fish, which he had first used when he was in art school, rests in the arms of a chair his grandmother owned. Hanging above it is a painting of fishermen copied by one of his father’s high school friends and given to his mother. In the painting, an electrical cord runs sinuously along the bottom emulating the lace on a lone running shoe.

The bass appears again in homage to his father, titled Sweet Tooth, now in an exhibition of his recent paintings at Quidley & Company Fine Art in Nantucket, Massachusetts. The levitating fish rises toward an assortment of sweets. The fish and sweets form a soft “S” curve. Fraser writes in the catalog, “I titled this painting Sweet Tooth since it reminds me of my dad who loved desserts. He also loved to fish. I think this painting would make him smile. Dad caught this bass right out front of his family’s cottage on the Fox River north of Chicago where he grew up.”