Sealed With a Kiss
The Art of Lipstick Lex
You’ll hear legends about sessions in recording studios and writing rooms, where everyone could feel in their bones that they were cooking up a chart-topper. Then, there are other stories where a hit sensation takes everyone—the artist, especially—by complete surprise.
That’s Alexis Fraser’s story. Before she became the phenomenon “Lipstick Lex,” showing Michael Strahan and Sara Haines how to kiss canvases on “Good Morning America”, Fraser was a realism and portraiture specialist, earnestly working to develop a visual voice that could rise above the roar in a field saturated in acrylics and oils. Fraser went through a phase of inventive experimentation where she challenged herself to paint with unconventional mediums to match her subject. She made a portrait of her dog in kibble. For a piece destined for a microbrewery, she brushed a canvas with beer. She painted Kate Middleton in English tea. Then, Fraser got the impulse to paint Marilyn Monroe.
“She was famously known for blowing her kisses, so I thought, What if I painted Marilyn Monroe with lipstick? Ooh, that would be cool—but let’s not stop there. I want to paint her with kisses.”
Fraser told her husband, Josh, about her notion of kiss-print pointillism. His reaction?
“He thought that was the coolest-sounding idea. So he’s, like, ‘Let’s film it and load it onto YouTube.’” Josh documented the unusual and utterly charming process on video and posted it to Fraser’s brand-new YouTube channel.
“This was the very first thing I ever put out into the internet that blew up. You go back to it now, and it’s a really cringy video,” Fraser allows. “But it got views. And then, different online publications wanted to re-share the video, so it went viral, essentially. That’s when I realized maybe I had a little golden nugget with this lipstick thing.”
Lipstick makes a fabulous medium for conveying Fraser’s style of lushly detailed figure work that often features likenesses of iconic women, explosive botanicals, and punchy positive messages in evocations of powerful femininity. Unlike traditional acrylics and oils, lipstick never fully dries on the canvas, so Fraser finishes each new piece with a coat of protective resin, which only amplifies their luster. The effect is almost juicy.
Fraser and her budding family moved to Sarasota from Toronto in 2017, and in looking for ways to get in front of folks in her new home, she soon discovered live painting opportunities at local restaurants such as Cafe Barbosso. That’s where chef and restaurateur Gino Calleja was smitten by a kissed portrait of Frida Kahlo, planting the seed for him to commission Fraser to be mistress of the vibe in a new, elevated Mexican concept, Kolucan, and its bar space, the Frida Lounge.
“Gino wanted some pieces that he would own for the restaurant, but then he also wanted something that the customers could enjoy, too,” Fraser says. “That’s where I came in with the live painting component, creating Frida Kahlo–inspired art on the first Friday of the month for the first six to eight months after Kolucan opened. It’s been a great way for me to get my name out there and meet people.”
The thing about artists, though, is that they’re beautifully human—meaning, they change. They grow. They evolve. Even when the crowd still goes wild every time, the artist may not feel the same fire in the belly for that hit song they’ve been playing for years.
“After a while, I started to become resentful of the lipstick ball and chain, thinking, This is what the people want,” Fraser says. “But my husband reminded me, ‘You’re the one who’s making this rule for yourself. No one’s telling you to kiss every piece anymore or that you have to use just lipstick.’” Fraser’s final fully kissed piece graces the welcome center at Wellen Park in North Port. She believes more than 10,000 kisses went into the mural celebrating the community’s tree conservation program.
“It was kind of hard for me to break from it because I did it for quite a few years. I will still use lipsticks, but my face is done. I want to paint with my hands like a normal person,” Fraser jokes. Cracking the mold of Lipstick Lex may feel a little scary, but Fraser says the path she took to get here has taught her a lot about facing fear as an artist.
“I’ve had to be uncomfortable in my job so many times—times where I truly did not know how to pay the bills, how I was going to feed the kids, how we’re going to pay the mortgage. There’s something about being uncomfortable where the desire to do my job somehow won’t let me stop doing it,” Fraser says. “Then it almost becomes spiritual. It’s about understanding my purpose and trying to find out, Who am I? What am I here to do, and what’s the big picture that’s supposed to come out of it? It’s not just about creating pretty pictures and selling art—there’s got to be more to it. And so I think being very uncomfortable along the journey has helped me discover myself.”
