Louise K Fraser
Teaching Artist
The following series has 5 screen prints. They are rectangular in shape with bright vivid colours and with a white circle in the middle. In the middle of this white circle are placed fidget toys. The images of the fidget toys have been created by photocopying the fidget toys and then creating a multi-layered screen print.
Each print is slightly different depending on the colours, the variety in the prints creating an interesting dynamic. The coloured backgrounds enhance the images by picking out colours within the screen prints. Bright pink, luminous green, turquoise blue, dark black and mauve purple all emphasise different fidgets within the artwork.
Each artwork contains 6 tangle toys all placed in the same position. However, the artwork is rotated in each print, creating different emphasis in each print due to colour and placement of the fidget. The fidgets in the prints consist of: 2 tangle twists overlapping in formed shapes; 2 snap and click tracks in 2 solid roundish shapes; 1 marble push toy and 4 pop bubble key rings.
“These are all commonly found fidgets and for me as the artist are something that I use every day as well as my students that I teach. I wanted to use a circular format in the artworks because it also creates a feeling of looking down at these objects as something under a microscope. Using fidgets can be something that is reassuring, something that indicates that you need time and space or just something that says you’re overwhelmed by a space and need time. I’m interested in putting the artworks in this context to see how everybody reacts to them and as part of this project I have asked different people to react to the prints and the creative series of collaborative artworks.” – Louise K Fraser
Hear an audio description of the Stim artworks below
Collaborations
Collaboration with Sam Rutherford – Freelance Art Educator and Artist, 2025
Off white background of 6 screen-printed fidget tools has been overdrawn with acrylic paint pens adding bright forms and vibrant pattern.
Alt text: Off white background of 6 screen-printed fidget tools has been overdrawn with acrylic paint pens adding bright organic shapes filled with a lively hand-drawn patterns, including eyes, spirals, and bold lines in black, blue, red, and pink. The swirling design bursts with energy, curiosity, and sensory detail, resembling a map of feeling and thoughts. This has then been animated by taking each eye drawing and making it blink at different speeds. Adding to the organic feeling of the artwork.
Alt text: Off white background of 6 screen-printed fidget tools has been overdrawn with acrylic paint pens adding bright organic shapes filled with a lively hand-drawn patterns, including eyes, spirals, and bold lines in black, blue, red, and pink. The swirling design bursts with energy, curiosity, and sensory detail, resembling a map of feeling and thoughts. This has then been animated by taking each eye drawing and making it blink at different speeds. Adding to the organic feeling of the artwork.
Collaboration with Paul Raymond – Artist and Art Teacher, 2025
Monochrome screen print of 6 fidget tools with drawing 3 surreal drawings add-in in black pen.
Alt text: A stark white background holds a 6 black tonal screen printed fidget tools. At the heart of two chain fidgets are filled with surreal abstract cellular creatures. Inside a tangle toy -a third abstract created forms winds around and out from the plastic tangled toy creating a surreal organic element resembling roots or natural networks. The mood is playful and biological, evoking bodily structures and hidden systems.
Image of black interlocked rings with abstract neon overlay.
Alt text: A dense mass of glossy black plastic rings fills the background. They overlap and sinuous link together, a photo filter has added glowing lines in lime green, turquoise, and pink. A white tangle fidget is placed on-top, this shape is repeated in different sizes and bright colours to make a strange face shape. This contrasts with the industrial black plastic background creating a sense of tension.
Collaboration with Claire Chalmers – English Teacher, 2025
Pastel pink background with 6 screen-printed fidget tools overlaid with bold white text.
Alt text: A pastel pink backdrop softens the vivid screen-printed of 6fidget tools. Overlaid white text says: “That it is noteworthy that this is done by someone but not as something to praise, but as a behaviour to be observed as other.” The soft palette and vulnerable language create a reflective, inclusive space for conversation.
Teal background with 6 colourfully screen-printed fidget tools overlaid with bold white text
Alt text: Against a teal backdrop, 6 colourfully screen-printed fidget toys theses semi-transparent like forms overlap, tinted with green, yellow, and purple. Bold white text reads, “The realisation that this has always been an embody way of being.” Creating a contemplative and reflection mood.
A mauve purple background with screen-printed fidget tools overlaid with bold white text.
Alt text: On a pastel mauve background, vibrant screen-printed fidget tools in pink, green, and black are scattered across the image. Overlaid in the centre bold white text reads, “Movement to think / Movement to settle.” The composition reflects the interplay between motion, emotional, regulation and our interpretation.
Grayscale background with 6 black screen-printed fidget tools overlaid with bold white text.
Alt text: A grey background with with 6 black fidget tools and sensory regulation items. White bold text overlays the image, reading: “Body in space moving and the body and brain in space connecting.” The visual tone is minimalist and grounding, emphasising embodied experience.
Neon green background with 6 colourfully screen-printed fidget tools overlaid with bold white text
Alt text: Against a bright green background 6 colourfully screen-printed fidget toys in neon tones overlaid with bold white text: “A space where it is joyful. A space where it is regulation. A space where it is a communication of discomfort.” The image captures an emotional spectrum of using sensory fidgets.
Collaboration with S1 Secondary School Pupils, 2025
Right: A short animation showing a pile of A3 artworks done by S1 students where they have doodled on-top of screen-print fidget toys on a bright orange background.
Alt text: Two hands engage with brightly painted cut-out shapes placed on a white sheet of paper. The background is a vivid red, creating a strong contrast. The cut-outs resemble the earlier chain forms, evoking play, interaction, and tactile creativity in a sensory learning context.
About Louise K Fraser and the Stim project
Louise K Fraser’s work is based in drawing, but spreads out to cover any material or process that weaves into the ideas she is trying to share. This varies from printmaking, textiles, technology and sculpture. Education and her work within schools as a freelance educator is something she is interesting in exploring through this project – Stim.
Louise is the lead artist for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation school project with the Fruitmarket Gallery where she is particular interested in exploring how evaluation can cross between quantitative and qualitative data, and also be an artwork in its own right as well. Louise I has embark on a two year teacher residency project where she will explore how boundaries between pedagogy, making and teaching come together.
For this project, Louise explores the in ‘tension’ of being an artist educator by looking at ways this online platform lets her share her art research processes, such as the ‘Stim’ project she is currently working on. Louise has used her skills in visual description to make the online space as accessible as possible.
Meet the Artist in the short video reel below
Louise K Fraser has worked as a dyslexic neurodivergent teaching artist for the past 18 years, since graduating with an MFA from the Edinburgh College of Art. Fraser’s teaching and practice are based around thinking and understanding, working with people and creating safe spaces to embrace differences and try new things. Fraser works across Scotland devising and delivering imaginative projects with councils, schools, communities and galleries at all ages and abilities, and was recently presented the Marsh Award for Excellence in Visual Art Education.
Fraser’s practice balances working with others and making for herself, developing a studio art practice from her WASPS Riverside House Studio in Edinburgh. Recent projects include Teach Art, a residency program for art teachers, and BRIDGE: Bridging the Pedagogical Gap, a project about radically rethinking artist and freelancer engagement with pedagogy. With a shift to online interaction since 2020, Fraser has continued to find creative and engaging approaches to both online in person workshops and training.
Find out more about In Tension and see exhibiting pages from other artists