Kristian Fletcher : New Works

About

MERCER CHANCE is thrilled to present an exhibition of new drawings and paintings by Kristian Fletcher.

Since completing The Drawing Year - the post-graduate programme at The Royal Drawing School - in 2013, Kristian has been working in the landscape to push his practice into deeper territory, using energetic and intuitive mark-making to forge a new language which expresses an ecstatic moment of perceptive immersion in nature. These works span two years of intense observation and experimentation in Scotland, France, India, Italy and the UK. 

Using pastels, charcoal and oil paint, Kristian makes an immediate response through rapid, gestural drawing. His natural sense of perspective and skill in observation ensure a coherent feeling of space within each image, yet they are steered away from straight-forward naturalism through his strong, distortive, formalist compositional decisions. Some pieces remain as responsive drawings, whilst others are scraped back, reapplied and reworked in the studio and become substantial paintings. Away from the influence of the real, Kristian is free to make radical choices and bring out the abstract qualities of the piece to their fullest expression. Colours are used to set up vibrational relationships that animate the surface in a way which is lively and unpredictable yet feels harmonious; each colour dances freely across the painting to create an overall sense of dynamic balance. 

Kristian’s ‘grid paintings’ such as French Garden no2 and Indian Metro push further into formalist deformation; paintings on paper are cut up and mounted onto timber squares which can be reassembled and rearranged, then painted over once more. This process invokes an exciting element of chance without being merely arbitrary; each painting still asserts a powerful and readable image despite its fragmentary transformation.