Welcome to The Makers. Each week, we’re celebrating innovators, artisans and crafters of all types, taking you on a private tour of their creative spaces. For this instalment, we head to Sydney’s Bronte, where artist Leah Fraser lives in a book-filled home with her family.
As an artist, Leah Fraser describes herself as “very hands-on". “I feel that there is a hand to heart connection,” the painter and sculptor explains. “The language of the hands is one that I am fluent in.”
You can see this in Fraser’s work and whenever she is in the studio, working on a creative project in a style she calls “stream of consciousness” – the creative work “just unravels itself as I go”. And you can see it in her home in Sydney’s Bronte, where she has lived with her partner and children for more than two years.
When they first moved in, they needed to do a lot of work to the building. “Everyone who had been here before us had had a go, and it was very run down and hodgepodge,” Fraser explains. They renovated the kitchen, the laundry, the bathroom, the floors and replaced all the lighting with pendants. Then it was time to tackle the outdoor areas, filling them with greenery and life. “It’s only now just feeling like the garden is settled in and it’s so beautiful,” she says.
Fraser’s favourite room, though, is the kitchen. It’s here that her beloved Il Fanale ceramic light is hung, over a marble island. And it’s here that the family spends most of their time together. “We love food and entertaining, and it’s where everyone naturally gravitates,” Fraser says. “But I love the light in the front living room in the afternoons, and snuggling up there in the evenings,” she adds.
