Stacey Fletcher is a Professor of 2D Studio Arts at Daytona State College. Fletcher received a Master of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2003, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing from Valdosta State University, Valdosta Georgia, in 2000. Fletcher has exhibited in many group, juried, and solo exhibitions, in the United States and abroad, including an International Painting Residency in Chelm Poland. Fletcher has been selected and given the opportunity to juror many different exhibitions, and her work itself, is now part of public and private art collections. Her work has been given many awards, including being published in a juried selection of two International Visual Artists in Studio Visit Magazine.

My work seeks to display a language based on the process of mark making, the journey of life and the goals we are trying to achieve, creating a surface struggling between what we do not see and that which is seen directly. The various layers of materials push boundaries and are manipulated and forced to do the impossible.

As a cathartic painter, my work explores the idea of evoking one’s emotion, background, and the journey of self. Largely inspired by abstract expressionism, naive mark making, intuitive gestures, and driven by symbolism, the works are abstract at first glance to the viewer but have some sense of childhood imagery disguised among the colorful layers. In turn they display a chaotic approach to material and process. The work is layered with metaphors of myself and others, contrasted with the chaotic approach of an energetic mark. My obsession to create marks, and manipulate and explore material through process, creates compositions imagined by demonstrating an intuitive need to record visual observations and experiences. For me, this infatuation drives the work and motivates each idea creating forms that become an abstraction of the idea. My current work has slowly moved away from any recognizable imagery that once adorned the surface of my paintings.

It is not just an impulsive approach to gestural mark making, but the love of materials and process that trumps the imagery. My work is a process of layering; layering thoughts, memories, and ideas with sensual materials, which motivate the paintings. I want to convey that the nonobjective nature of these works are much more than a quick gesture. I want the work to spark or generate an idea of its own.