CYNTHIA FLETCHER

MEDIUM

Painting

ARTIST STATEMENT

“The cycle of flower, fruit and seed builds the next generation. Each seed overcomes challenges to grow and produce its own seeds. I find this process beautiful, powerfully positive and instructive both personally and globally.”

ARTIST BIO

Cynthia Fletcher is a third-generation artist and taps into a vibrant creative tradition. Surrounded by art and the materials to make it, she discovered carving and printing linoleum cuts when she was young and continued to explore printmaking for decades.

In 2010, Cynthia took a break from her printing press to explore oils, and painting in oil is now her artistic focus. She paints in series that address issues and events she finds important. Her current two series grew out of her deep concern for the health of our planet. Her complex feelings about young members of her family becoming parents in a precarious time deepened her conviction that the process of building the next generation is a movingly positive step. She realized that nature makes this process clearly and beautifully visible all around us in the cycle of flower, fruit, seed, and seedling.

She then focused on the lesson found in the resilience of plants. Plants grow where their seed falls, making the most of what they find. The environment doesn’t have to be perfect; plants grow around, over, and through challenges in order to produce the cycle that gives rise to the next seed and seedling.

Each painted image depicts a success story, and she finds them deeply positive and instructive on a personal as well as a planetary level.

A lifelong student of art, she studied at the Laguna Beach School of Art, The University of California Santa Barbara, Community Colleges, and numerous private studios. She has taught printmaking, drawing, and painting and is a member of the Board of Directors of LOCA, a non-profit that raises money to pay professional artists to teach art to people of all ages and abilities. She has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally.