Helena Fox and West Fraser met in Charleston where West, a painter well known for his expressive depictions of the Lowcountry landscape, was living and working. Helena, an art collector and native of Sweden, had recently moved there after years of living in Costa Rica. In 2005, the couple married in Stockholm. They recently relocated to Camden, where they purchased a home on 2.5 acres that significantly reflects them, their lifestyle, and their multitude of interests.
In books and on television, in the theater and on movie screens, serendipity often plays a big role — changing lives with an unexpected fender bender, dropped phone, or runaway dog. Remarkably, serendipity shows up in the real world, too. Just ask West and Helena Fox Fraser, whose lives have been seemingly controlled by the sweeping force for more than 20 years.
It began in Charleston, where West, a painter well-known for his expressive depictions of the Lowcountry landscape, was living and working. Helena, a widow and native of Stockholm, Sweden, had recently moved to the city after years in Costa Rica and a short stint in Beaufort. Though they seemed to live in different worlds — Helena was working as a television producer at the time — once they were introduced, they realized that their meeting was serendipitous. “For starters, we had a surprising number of friends in common,” says Helena, “but then I remembered that I had seen West’s work years before in a sailing magazine. When I went back to look at it, I realized that his paintings were in the same issue that had featured some of my late husband’s photography. And that they were both avid sailors.”
Helena and West soon realized that they not only shared friends, but an interest in art as well; Helena as a collector and West as an artist. It didn’t take long for their mutual interests to turn to friendship; in 2003 West convinced Helena to open an art gallery; two years later, the couple married in Stockholm. By then, the gallery was a success, representing not only West and his vast collection of works but a number of other painters, sculptors, and jewelry designers.
Helena and West were happy in Charleston — the gallery continued to prosper and West had ready access to his beloved Lowcountry — but by about 2020 they realized that they were ready for a change of scenery. “I needed more space to garden, focus, play, and paint,” says West. “It could be anywhere, but it had to feel good.”
Hunting for a home with strict parameters is hard enough; searching for a place to land that also feels right requires deeper thought and lots of time. Remarkably, it didn’t take long. In 2021, West came across a house on about two and a half acres near Camden’s historic district. It had outbuildings that could be transformed into studio space and plenty of room for dogs to run and for West to plant a garden. “It was funky and cool,” says Helena, “and it somehow spoke to both of us.”
Alas, by the time the Frasers were ready to put in an offer, the home was under contract.
Disappointed but determined, Helena and West spent the next 11 months exploring communities in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina; by April of 2022 they had all but settled on a home in Dahlonega, Georgia, a mountain town just across the border from Anderson, South Carolina. It was fine, but, in the end, it just didn’t feel “right” enough to prompt a move so the couple canceled their contract.
On a whim, West checked in on the Camden property, only to find that the couple who had the contract on it had also canceled. “I took one more trip out there and realized the light was perfect, so I bought it for the full asking price,” says West. “I called Helena and told her that I hoped she was serious about loving it because I’d just put in an offer.”
Helena couldn’t have been more thrilled. “Since it hadn’t been renovated since 2012, I knew I could tear it up and make it our own,” says Helena. “It had all the right pieces.”
Once again, though, the Frasers found themselves in a bind. Not only had their Mount Pleasant home sold immediately, but the new owners requested occupancy within 30 days. “Painting is as far as we got before we moved in,” says Helena with a laugh. “Everything else has been done while we’ve been living here, including gutting the kitchen and the master bath and adding insulation.”
The couple also went to work on the property’s outbuildings, too, transforming an outdoor cookhouse to an office and gym for Helena and the horse stable into West’s frame shop. West also began drawing up plans for his dream studio, which would be situated to catch perfect light and contain space for, besides painting, displaying completed works and meeting with clients.
But first, the house. “It’s not a show house, and it’s still a work in progress, but it’s us,” says Helena. “The older you get, the more aware you are of yourself. The dogs can get on the furniture, and if we spill a bottle of wine on the sofa we won’t get upset. I wanted the art to talk, not the furniture.”
And talk it does. Most of the paintings are West’s, who, at the age of 13, told his aunt that he wanted to be a painter. “My grandmother got me started,” says West as he points to a painting hanging near the front door. “She was a painter herself and always had crayons and paper on hand for me.”
But while West’s talent was organic, his desire to paint the Lowcountry was a bit more complicated. “My family is in the land development business, and even as a youth it struck me that I didn’t really like what that meant,” he says. “I think I felt like I could ‘save’ the land by painting it.”
After graduating from the University of Georgia, West found a job as an illustrator in New York. Although he hated the work, his time in the region led him to the discovery of a group of Pennsylvania artists who painted Impressionistic landscapes. “It was a new kind of painting for me, and it thrilled me,” he says.
It was also about this time that West came across the work of Tom Thomson, a Canadian artist who devoted his life to traveling through his homeland and documenting the varied landscapes on canvas. “Thomson’s work gave me the courage to return to the Lowcountry to paint as much of mine as I could, so that’s what I did,” says West about the beginning of his career as a painter.
For the next 30 or so years, West did just that. He would spend days on the water searching the landscape for scenes he could capture to “make a painting” before returning to the studio to render his impressions in watercolor.
That all changed in 1989 when Hurricane Hugo swept through South Carolina, decimating the coast and, along the way, altering West’s artistic process. “I was pushing the watercolors as far as they could go with regard to saturation and vibrancy and realized that to get the feeling I wanted to convey I needed to switch to oil,” says West. “I also decided to stop painting in the studio and start painting outside, in the midst of it all.”
So West, like so many artists before him, packed up a small easel, tubes of paint, and sets of brushes, and hit the road to find just the right landscapes. “I dealt with gnats, I sank into mud, and I forgot to eat, but in the end, those sessions were like meditation, where you pick up the rhythm and the spirit of a place and it just flows out of your arm,” he says. “It’s like an auto response.”
What West didn’t do was copy those landscapes. Instead, he arranged what he saw into a composition that he calls a “dance for the eyes.” He says, “I call it ‘making a painting’ because that’s really what I’m doing. I don’t paint exactly what I see.”
Today, those thousands of hours in front of an easel are documented on the walls of the Frasers’ Camden home. Featured are small watercolors, some taking advantage of the paint’s ability to create a haze of color, others displaying hues so rich and deep they look more like ink than paint. The oils appear almost constructed, the layers of paint giving them an inherent depth. “If you look closely, you’ll see gnats buried in the paint,” says West with a laugh. “I must have hundreds of paintings with gnats in them.”
Sharing space with West’s works are drawings, paintings, and other artistic impressions collected by both West and Helena over the years. “I’m passionate about Latin American art, particularly indigenous art, so there’s a lot of it all over the house,” says Helena. “But I have to have a lot of Scandinavian works as well because they’re a piece of me, a piece of my country.” Though Helena didn’t produce any of the paintings — she says that she lacks both the desire and the talent — she did hang every one without doing a bit of measuring. “It’s my gift,” she says, “but don’t look too closely behind the paintings. The walls have a lot of holes.”
West’s art also fills the walls of his studio, which was precisely sited to 7 degrees north so that diffuse northern light would brighten the space without casting shadows or sending intense streams of sunshine onto canvases. Built like a structure from the 1800s, the studio was constructed of knotty pine and hand-hewn oak. Period details abound, including exterior window sills handcrafted by builder Mickey Anderson with grooves to drain rainwater and a porch pitched to 15 degrees so it would easily shed water.
The space is divided into three areas: a cozy book-lined meeting space where clients can sit comfortably; the working studio, which is highlighted by a two-story window, West’s massive Hughes easel, and more paintings; and a loft, which is reached by a ladder. The floors are covered with ornate rugs; a woodstove warms with a cozy aroma. “I designed the space for exactly what I wanted and it’s perfect,” says West. “I’ll be painting forever, right here.”
When West isn’t painting, he’s gardening and cooking. Below are a few of his favorite recipes.
Wild Black Cherry Rum
50 pitted black American cherries
1 lavender bud
Rum Centenario, 12 Años
Place pitted cherries in a funnel a few at a time and wash with rum so that they flow into the bottle. Add a lavender bud. Let stand for a month before consuming.
Wild Black Cherry Whisky
50 pitted black American cherries
Bluffton Whiskey crafted with Carolina Gold Rice
Place pitted cherries in a funnel a few at a time and wash with rum so that they flow into the bottle. Let stand for a month before consuming.
Pickled Shrimp
4 pounds small Atlantic wild-caught, fresh, white shrimp, peeled
½ bell pepper
1 red onion
1 clove garlic
10 raisins
½ cup fine sea salt, to taste
1 teaspoon red chili pepper flakes, to taste
2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning, to taste
2 dashes Hank’s Cilanktro Hot Sauce, to taste
1 quart vinegar, composed of 16 ounces each of Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar and distilled white vinegar
2 quarts filtered water
1 sprig fresh oregano
1½ cups Italian parsley leaves and flower spikes
Combine all ingredients except the shrimp. Boil shrimp until they turn pink, about 4 minutes.
Place shrimp in pot with pickling mixture, stir a bit and refrigerate for 24 hours, and then transfer to jars or serve.
Note: It is very important to consider using only fresh, wild-caught shrimp. Foreign mariculture pond shrimp can have hormones, antibiotics, and who knows what other chemicals, and the Atlantic shrimp fleets are being put out of business by cheap foreign shrimp. Atlantic shrimp are abundant and a sustainable resource that is important to keep, support, and relish.
