Suggesting Reality

Douglas Fryer discusses teaching, inspiration and creating highly expressive artwork

SCOTTSDALE ARTISTS' SCHOOL: You are the Signature Artist for Scottsdale Artists School's Beaux Arts this year. Tell us about that.

DOUGLAS FRYER: It is a wonderful honor. I have been associated with the school for many years and have a great respect for SAS. It was a pleasure to donate my painting titled July, a 24-by-24-inch oil on panel. It is a landscape of several horses grazing in a warm, yellow field of grass. I wanted the painting to be more of a symbolic environment, using bright colors and abstract passages of paint. The overlapping shapes of the horses express a passage of time, suggesting that they have moved and are moving slowly through the grass.

SAS: Tell us about teaching at SAS?

DG: I have been teaching at the Scottsdale Artists' School for about six years now. There is an energy like no other. The students are motivated by the instruction, environment and collaboration with other like-minded artists. Many of them meet there and continue their professional association and friendship for years afterward.

SAS: Why did you choose to teach there?

DG: The school is a facility dedicated to the creation of new and beautiful works of art. The perfect place to teach, in a lovely setting, and so close to galleries and museums, restaurants and shops. I always look forward to the workshops, the students and assisting them and their own progress as visual artists.