July 6 – 29, 2023
Artist Saundra Fleming‘s work echoes her profound orientation around a philosophy of Absurdism. Thinkers such as Kafka and Camus embraced Absurdism in their struggle to make sense of death and evil in the world. As convincing as these two thinkers are in affirming this philosophy, Fleming’s own work will always reflect a powerful instinct for transcendence.
Some of the pieces in Finding Form in the Invisible are visual descriptions, in paint, of her own personal epiphanies over the span of her life—uncanny experiences from age five to her current age of sixty three.
Expressing a kind of quintessential paradox, Finding Form in the Invisible will, for now, determine Fleming’s non-logical and rather mystical philosophy of life. Albert Camus’ belief that “human beings are caught in a constant attempt to derive meaning from a meaningless world” can be said, for her, to approximate only a part of humankind’s big picture. It is in the conception and painting of Fleming’s paradoxical philosophy that she attempts to reveal where her heart lives today.
Fleming finds this project to be the hardest concept she’s ever worked with as a painter. The form wants to show itself; it wants to exist in paradox. She finds herself working with the concept of ellipsis — implied movement and form, but unresolved imagery that is part way existing and part way not existing. And this is as it should be.
Each piece contains the metaphysical substrate of matter, and of energy—a relationship of the two in Fleming’s intuition. This is the first work in ages that is calling her to slow down, to paint night after night toward an approximation of what exists and does not exist at the same time. In her words, “this work is frankly absurd and 100% necessary to move on with my philosophy of living”.
Finding Form in the Invisible will be on display at Gallery 110 from July 6 – 29, 2023. Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday from 12pm – 5pm and by appointment. Please join us for the First Thursday Art Walk on July 6 from 4-8pm.
