An Interview with Saundra Fleming
By Tara McDermott
Our current featured member exhibit includes the metaphysical work of painter Saundra Fleming. Here’s an interview explaining her artistic journey, in which we learn about the characters she paints, the connection to family, and her nostalgic use of color. It’s a wild ride, so let’s dive right into the conversation.
Give us a little background about your art and you as an artist.
I’ve always loved art history, and was always pretty interested in the psychological side of things. Leading towards the philosophical. I’ve always made work about the search for some sort of “God” really. That was based on a tragic suicide of my father, who couldn’t afford insurance and he had a mental illness, and he had that tragic ending. I started painting after that. I was always trying to find some evidence that there was God’s existence in the world that would prove there was a benevolent force behind things. And painting has always helped me be more and more positive and optimistic that there really is good behind the world.
Art helped me be more.
How old were you when that happened to your dad?
I was 28.
Wow. And how did you go about it, did you have any formal training or did you just pick it up on your own?
I thought I was going to be an elementary art educator. Started out studying art, but a bunch of grad students said “you should go to grad school, you’re a good painter.” That’s how it happened. I have an MFA in painting and drawing.
Explain the arc of your art[making] since you left school.
It was a lot of fun leaving the South and going up to Chicago, and studying there. Funnest thing I ever did in my life. And then came back down to the South, in Texas. I was very unhappy there; I always wanted to get back into more urban areas, where I could be around people who that were like 1,000 times smarter than me.
So, you’ve always been interested in the exploration of God, and a Greater Being, and the meaning behind tragedy in your life. Would you still say that is still the main focus behind your work, including your featured show, or is that more like a subtext?
I’ve applied for a Guggenheim fellowship that I’ll find out about in April. The project I proposed to them, was a series of paintings called “Shopping for God.”
That makes me think about consumerism, and where we are as a society in general right now.
We’re kind of split. We want spiritual, but we’re shopping all the time. We’re tied up in capitalism and
I’ve had some people say my work is somewhat an indictment of capitalism. I talk about a search for meaning in our culture and how it’s very difficult…
Tell me about the theme of your current show at Columbia City Gallery, Whopper, with Margaret Tylczak.
It was Margaret’s idea, that we both bring a wild flurry of imagination to our projects and she thought of us as being the teller of tall tales. But on the poster, I described my work as the “Metaphysical World of Saundra Fleming.” When it comes down to it, I really think Philosophy is my great love. Painting is the way I see Philosophy. It’s the language I use, ‘cause I can’t use intellectual English language to explore the things that are important to me. I use paint.
I find that interesting that you say that. I think of you as a critical thinker, very philosophical in your explanations. I actually love your descriptions and the writings about your work, sometimes as much as the work themselves, sometimes even more, because they are so witty, and deep, and take me in really unexpected directions.
Yeah, I would never assume my paintings substitute for philosophy, but it’s the only language I know.
Let’s dive a little bit into your style. I know you tend to use an interesting color palette, somewhere between soft pastels and soft neon.
Yeah. A lot of that mint green and aqua, which is going to be almost that all the new show has in it. It comes straight out of my grandmother’s house when I was 5 years old. She had an Interior Designer do her house. Everything was in aqua. She even had an aqua Cadillac. She was the most artistic person in my family. And her color palette in her house just turned my world around. She had aqua lava lamps on several of the televisions going at all hours. It was just a trip to go to her house, and it really affected me.
I’m going to be glad to go beyond those colors. For now, I’m stuck with them more than ever. This show will be kindof comical in that way.
I also wanted to ask you, your treatment of the canvas. You’ve done some digital painting, but you primarily do paintings on canvas (or board), with lots of abstract shapes, and a very thin surface. You don’t have a lot of built-up paint.
I’ve had people say my works looks unfinished. That’s a big philosophical point with me. Any statement I make about the nature of the world and the people in it, it’s always going to be by nature incomplete. The biggest thing about it is that it’s open, it’s unfinished, and it’s evolving, ya know? I also like drawings more than paintings. Like in my large 6’ canvas there’s some areas that are just some charcoal sketches [mixed] in with the painted surface. I just like that openness…because life is open, life is completely changing all the time. I prefer the canvas to reflect that.
And tell me about the style of your mark making.
Oh yeah. I also have kindof a bad 3rd grader-looking aesthetic. I don’t have any problem getting that effect [laughs] I have to admit I cherish it, and enjoy it. I would feel embarrassed to make beautiful, elegant paintings like Chardin or something. I’m a lot funkier of a human being that that.
I was intrigued by your mini drawings in the show. And I see you do a lot of drawing on social media. You’re very productive.
I was just at Artist & Craftsman and found these small pads of polyurethane paper. I thought, how fun, I’ll just throw some on the pedestal. I’m still working with them. I’m just playing around. And my vocabulary for the figure can be so extremely different in each of those drawings. Just me sketching out different ways to approach the figure really.
That brings up an interesting point. All of your work seems to have a character, someone in your family. You reference your mother a lot in your pieces. It’s interesting that your dad was the impetus for you to become an artist. But for the most part, most of your figures tend to be female.
I’m moving towards a place where I want to do work that connects my belief in a God to the love I had for my parents, and what the nature of what that was like growing up. Do you know what a reliquary is? I have this nutty idea to do a series of contemporary reliquaries. I was going to have a piece of the true housecoat from my mother, instead of a piece of the true cross from Jesus. And then I was going to have the hair of Cousin It in another, and even a sponge pink curler in another one. I’m thinking of things from my family, objects, that connect my love for my mother and father. If by some chance I get that Guggenheim money, I would want to do a show “On the Scent of God, Recent Reliquaries.”
So how long have you been at Columbia City Gallery (CCG)? How would you say your art has changed in that time?
It’s going on 8 years. CCG has turned me into a much more polite painter than I typically would be otherwise. I have that consciousness of someone viewing the work, whereas from the most part I paint for myself. I paint so I can endure. I desperately need it. But showing in the gallery, I try to communicate more with people than I typically would.
I came to a realization of making work that sells. I started working on a formula for that. I think it’s a couple of things: when you have shared human experience in a work, that a lot of people can relate to, and also when there’s subconscious psychological material in work. That’s sort of the 1-2 punch. I started using Charlie Brown characters to communicate. Everyone knows him. In the big piece in the current show, the therapist is like a Charlie Brown character. I’ve had such success with that series of figures, it helps my painting language, so I’m sticking with it.
So what’s the your current show about, the “Metaphysical World of Saundra Fleming?”
Most of the metaphysical things are medium-sized drawings, I have about 13-14 of those, they’re about the existence of things. What exists between things. I have lots of weird drawings of things where I have strange objects coexisting and the space between them is where the action is. I’m just in love with the mystery. Metaphysical drawings are all about the question of things as they exist. And maybe why they exist in the way they do. But just the fact that anything exists at all is just a freakin’ surprise and a miracle.
Saundra’s current exhibit runs through March 21
See more of Saundra’s work:
Website: http://www.saundrafleming.com/
Instagram: @painting.squirrel