Karlena Fletcher is an oil painter currently residing in Arkansas. She graduated with a BFA in Painting in 2021 from Boston Univesity and is currently preparing for an MFA program.
This first Artist Talk, Karlena and I discussed art school culture, mainly the group mindset that controls critiques and artists that focus on maintaining their identity.
C: I feel that in art school there’s this idea that you always have to craft what your identity is and portray it through your work. Do you relate?
Karlena: I absolutely do. Of course earlier in your career there’s a lot of shifts happening…
However, I definitely felt and built for myself a bit of an identity as an artist. If you look at my work, it's very slow, it’s based in observation, it’s quiet, it’s domestic, it's beautiful without being over-rendered or without anything being edited to the point where it no longer reflects life. So when that carries over into my personhood, it’s an expectation that I should be thoughtful, quiet, but brutally honestly.
If you look at my art, its seems like I'm the kind of person who is reflective and might see something from a new perspective that’s been right in front of their eyes the whole time. And in a lot of cases that is true about myself, but I’m not always like that.
C: You actually led me into what I wanted to ask you next…
For me, I kind of almost see it as prideful. Who you are at the end of the day is not even given by you. So it’s this self-contrived world of what you are and then you have to put that into your work and then you have to put that into your being.
Karlena: Well, something I get a lot recently is that I should paint about my experience…
When I hit a wall in my work, friends will say just paint about your experience… paint about living with chronic pain. I don’t want to do that. I think its unfair to ask artists to paint their reality, or to paint their experience, or paint their truth, Many find a lot of solace in doing that, I don’t.
One of my biggest fears actually has been as my identity has been changing or these other definitions has been added to my identity, is that my work would change in response.
…
TSM Notes is a biweekly blog hosted by The SMILE Market; TSM is an alternative handmade crafts marketplace that curates the artists in order to promote a culture based in the virtues of humility, modesty, temperance and charity.
Subscribe to TSM Notes
By Chinwe · Launched a month ago
Share this post