GALLERY SPACE
MORE THAN JUST A FAMILY HOME, ARTIST DAVID FRAZER’S HOUSE IS A SHOWCASE OF ART AND SCULPTURE.
Multi-talented printmaker David Frazer’s vast collection of art is on display throughout his light-filled Castlemaine home.
IT’S THE WIDE, open spaces of the country and a sense of isolation that often inspire David Frazer’s art. These are common themes throughout the work of this award-winning artist and printmaker, known for his fine woodcuts, linocuts, etchings and lithographs, as well as his sculpture and paintings. It all harks back to his country childhood; his father was a school principal and his early years were spent in the little Wimmera town of Murtoa in north-west Victoria. “I remember those very rural-based melancholic feelings that centre on my time in Murtoa as a kid, when I used to sit on the roof and look out over the plains and the wide expanses of landscape. I remember the town on a Saturday afternoon was completely devoid of people and that feeling of melancholy — and beauty — and that’s what I capture in my work,” says the 51-year-old. Today it’s the vibrant town of Castlemaine, 130 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, that is David’s home and the centre of his creativity. He lives here with his wife Sarah, an art conservator specialising in paper, and their two-year-old twins, Thomas and Evelyn, in the home they finished building in early 2015. David’s older boys from a previous marriage, Oskar, 13, and Lukas, 10, spend time here too. The block was once part of a bigger property with stables shaded by huge cedars. Down the back is David’s “big tin shed” — his studio and bolthole, which he built well before the house. As a boy David was always drawing. However, his path towards a career in art wasn’t direct. He moved to Bendigo to study for a teaching diploma in 1991, and then decided to pursue ambitions in singing and acting, before finally >
discovering printmaking was what he wanted to do. “I had a flair for it and I like the narrative of it, so in 1996 I decided to do an Honours in printmaking at Monash in Melbourne. One of the lecturers there introduced me to wood engraving — the old fashioned way of illustrating newspapers — and it was love at first sight.” It’s an art form David has used to illustrate books. In 2014 he illustrated one of Paul Kelly’s songs, Little Aches & Pains, making it into a small book, and in 2017 he collaborated with the songwriter Don Walker in an interpretation of his song Pool. David moved to Castlemaine with his first wife in 2008, when he bought the old stables building next door to the house. A year later he was single again and rather than do up the stables, he subdivided the land to build a new house. “I sold the stables and kept two thirds of the property with the studio on it. And then I started to build the new house.” Then he met Sarah, 39, in Port Fairy on the west coast. “The house was meant to be modest, but it ended up becoming quite grand. If I’d known I was going to double my family and have more kids I would have designed it differently as the bedrooms are pretty squishy, but downstairs the living area is very nice and open plan.” The gabled house reflects the form of the old stables next door and sits in a landscaped garden featuring drystone walls. Recycled timbers and bricks were more sustainable and affordable than new, and added to the home’s rustic aesthetic. “I quite like how it’s all different now,” says David. Inside, the light-filled home is split level, with the two bedrooms on a mezzanine under the steep pitched roof >