Kevin Fletcher, Underemployed Longshoremen Looking Wistfully at an Empty Cargo Ship. Monotype
Davidson Galleries is pleased to share new monotypes from Contemporary artist, Kevin Fletcher. In these works, we revisit familiar places with fresh eyes. We stand in warehouses, beside freeways, along marinas, and watch as ordinary, industrial materials become inventions, totems, and dreams. We join longshoremen, teenagers, and our own memories as we look and ponder. Fletcher delves into the complexity of underappreciated spaces, addresses the gritty reality, and reveals dreamspaces from what was overlooked. He appreciates emptiness – places that are meant to have people but where people no longer remain due to disasters like floods, fires, and abandoned industries.
Kevin Fletcher, A Possible Arson at the Plant over the Holiday Closure. Monotype
Kevin Fletcher, Theatre Catwalk and Loading Dock Damaged by Flooding. Monotype
Fletcher’s monotypes are far from empty. With only ink carefully added and painstakingly wiped away, and with only one impression of each monotype, Fletcher builds incredible scenes. There are calm, bright waters viewed through dark frames. There are smoke plumes with the texture of brush strokes and hectic messes of wires and wood crisscrossing through cities and storerooms. There is energy and a feeling of deep, layered space. By turning attention to places that are neglected, forgotten, places of labor, transitory places, he draws out complicated reactions when we reconsider our own town’s old fishing docks and our own wistful looks. We appreciate the inventions that could be made from almost nothing, and the thin wires that hold it all together.
Kevin Fletcher, Delta Memory, Fishing Afternoon, Empty Station. Monotype
Kevin Fletcher (American, b, 1956) was born in Cincinnati in 1956 and is based in Santa Rosa, California. He received his BFA in Printmaking and Graphic Design from Miami University in Ohio in 1978 and his MFA in Printmaking from Syracuse University in 1981. He has taught as a visiting artist at many institutions including the Pacific Northwest College of Art and San Jose State University, and has taught drawing, printmaking, watercolor, and art history at Santa Rosa Junior College for 30 years. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in many public collections, including the Library of Congress, University of Glasgow, and many others. Fletcher is known for his monotype prints that feature industrial ruins, abandoned waterfronts, and hints of life amongst the chaos. He emphasizes reductive techniques in the monotype medium to contrast light and dark with painterly strokes and complex compositions.