Kathe
Fraga

Chinoiserie — the European decorative tradition born in the 17th and 18th centuries, when French and English craftsmen invented a fantasy version of China layered onto wallpapers, lacquerware, silk, and porcelain — is her subject and her structure. The tradition runs from Boucher and Pillement through Delft tile and Chippendale furniture; the MET’s 2015 exhibition “China: Through the Looking Glass” was the highest-attended show in the museum’s costume history and directly inspired her 2017 collaboration with Clé de Peau Beauté. Fraga’s specific contribution is the surface: acrylic with gold ink and gold leaf applied to a frescoed birch panel, then sealed with a glossy lacquer glaze. The fresco ground — powdery, slightly rough, reading as aged plaster — is what separates her work from other Chinoiserie-inspired painting. The surface already looks like a wall that has been there for two hundred years. Gold leaf and gold ink occupy the upper register with archaeological hesitancy, defining a circular moon form and decorative borders that sit *on* rather than integrate into the plaster, their metallic sheen emphasizing their status as applied ornament. Pink and burgundy botanical clusters—rendered in a flat, almost stenciled manner—cascade and scatter across the abraded ground, their powdery quality matching the friable surface below, anchored by a single figure wearing a gold halo-like shape at the composition's center. The fresco technique destabilizes the Chinoiserie vocabulary: rather than projecting the exotic refinement such imagery traditionally promises, the peeling, stippled ground converts these garden motifs and gilded decorations into artifacts of their own commerce, acknowledging how such imagery has been layered, scraped, and reapplied across Western visual history.

Her paintings have been featured in VIE Magazine (three-page feature, October 2019), Luxe Interiors + Design Pacific Northwest Edition (“Style Maker,” 2013), Better Homes & Gardens (May 2013), Seattle Magazine (March 2011), and international design publications in Mexico, Turkey, and Malaysia. She collaborated with Clé de Peau Beauté (Shiseido) on the 2017 “Nuit de Chine” limited-edition holiday collection and with Papyrus Cards. Her paintings have appeared on set in The Kominsky Method and The Office. Her work is in the collections of Swedish Hospital, Island Hospital, and Our Lady of the Lakes Hospital in Baton Rouge, and she created wine list books for the Inn at Langley. She cites Klimt, Chagall, Matisse, Bonnard, and the French textile designer Paule Marrot as influences, alongside Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints.

My paintings evoke the hand-painted, timeworn walls of a grand old Parisian mansion, each piece resembling an aged decorative panel adorned with birds and flowers, vines and leaves in a modern Chinoiserie style. Color reacting to color is a big influence. It’s exciting to paint a bold wide swath of red and then layer it with bright orange and then add a subdued branch of soft little pink blossoms to create a surprising mix of modern and sweet, small detail.