Artist Statement
I paint about the animating consciousness that is in the nature of all things. What makes a frog a frog, a flower a flower? The reality is not just in the way a thing looks. All that is essential is invisible to the eye. I hold a paradox such as this to be true. My work examines what some might call the absurd or the impossible.
My mind will try to create a spectral nature, a ghost-like reality for a viewer to perceive. There is a perpetual hunger in me to invent the unrecognizable. I work to undo the accepted perceptual “realities” that block the infinity of human visual experience.
Ironically, most recently, my painting has taken a turn toward realism!
I find myself juxtaposing the more abstract and experimental figurative work of 35 years with a new almost photographic portraiture. How the two bodies of work will integrate, or refuse to, is an artistic experiment I am looking forward to executing.
The “animating consciousness” mentioned early in this statement, is still what I am most sensitive to and searching for in my portraits. My studies of powerful creative individuals draw me ever closer to my own revelations of a personal spiritual awareness.
The opposition of realism and abstraction, in painting the human figure,
Has come to me, at age 62, as a sincere, at times frightening, surprise!
I feel I could never have reached this point in representational painting had I made a plan to do so.
Saundra Fleming 10/19/2021
Seattle, WA
