about beth fletcher

Practice
Grounded in the British and European landscape tradition, my working practice consists of translating into visual language a felt experience of landscape, describing a multi-sensory response to light, wind, water and land with paint, which has its own complex and invigorating language.

For me, painting landscape truthfully is as much about touch as vision, as much about intuition and memory as conscious thought and decision. It requires intuitive, gestural and organic mark-making, reproducing the actions of nature, adjusting and re-adjusting to every previous mark, responding to colour relationships and ideas that have gone before in order to build up a constructed experiential landscape.

These layered, transient, seen and felt moments, when transformed through the painting process, are intended to engender a prolonged engagement with the painting as a mediated experience of landscape. In the studio, rather than directly in front of the landscape, I can paint under the influence of the memory’s interpretation of the living landscape – the ‘soul-yearning’ which is a response to more than what is manifest only to the eye.

2001 1st class BA Hons Fine Art with Art History, University of Wales Aberystwyth
2003 Distinction MA Fine Art, University of Wales Aberystwyth

Selected exhibitions:

Solo
2011 A Struck Cloud Rings Sweet, Lion Street Gallery, Hay on Wye
2011 New Light, Denise Yapp Contemporary Art, Monmouth
2009 Beth Fletcher, Gallery 3, Shrewsbury
2009 Beth Fletcher, Gallery at Bevere, Worcester
2008 Beth Fletcher: new work, Plas Glyn y Weddw gallery, North Wales
2007 Beth Fletcher, Queen Elizabeth hospital, Birmingham
2006 Beth Fletcher: recent paintings, Ludlow Assembly Rooms, Ludlow
2004 Estuary, St Julian’s Centre, Shrewsbury
2004 Beth Fletcher: Hinterland, Gallery on Broadway, Cardiff
2003 Beth Fletcher, Gallery on Broadway, Cardiff
2002 Beth Fletcher: Seascapes/Riverscapes, Shelton Hospital, Shrewsbury

Two- and Three-man
2009 All Women, Albany Gallery, Cardiff
2008 Three Generations, Martin’s Gallery, Cheltenham
2007 Youthful, Exciting, Experienced, Martin’s Gallery, Cheltenham
2007 Beth Fletcher, Mike Monaghan and Sarah Richards, Albany Gallery, Cardiff
2006 A Personal Selection, Martin’s Gallery, Cheltenham
2006 Scratching the Surface, Atticus Arts, Bath
2005 Nick Holly and Beth Fletcher, Albany Gallery, Cardiff
2005 Women Only, Albany Gallery, Cardiff

Group
Annual summer, Christmas and various other gallery artist exhibitions at Albany Gallery, Plas Glyn y Weddw, Denise Yapp Contemporary Art, Galeri Betws y Coed, Gallery SCA, Gallery at Bevere, Martin’s Gallery, Ffin y Parc Gallery and Lion Street Gallery, plus the following:
2011 Open, Ffin y Parc Gallery, nr. Betws y Coed
2010 Spring, Martin’s Gallery, Cheltenham
2009 Cherish, Gallery SCA, Shrewsbury
2009 Welsh Artists abroad, Plas Glyn y Weddw gallery, North Wales
2009 Autumn collection, Gallery SCA, Shrewsbury
2008 Festival, Silent Voices gallery, Hay on Wye
2008 Imaging the Bible, University of Wales Aberystwyth
2008 Drawings, Plas Glyn y Weddw gallery, North Wales
2008 Summer, Salt gallery, Cornwall
2007 Christmas show, Stronach gallery, Connemara, Ireland
2007 Winter show, Josie Eastwood gallery, Winchester
2006 Ship to Shore, Bell Fine Art, Winchester
2006 Affordable Art Fair (with the Albany gallery, Cardiff)
2005 Shropshire Open Art Exhibition, Gateway Arts Centre, Shrewsbury (awarded Under 25 prize)
2004 Shropshire Open Art Exhibition, Gateway Arts Centre, Shrewsbury (awarded Under 25 prize)
2004 MA final show, Aberystwyth
2004 MA interim show, Aberystwyth
2003 Emerging Young Artists 03, Birmingham