Kate Fleming
Arlington, VA
Website
www.kateflemingpaintings.com
www.the50statesproject.com
Social Media
@kateflemingpaintings
@the50statesproject_
How would you describe your work?
I am an oil painter, a printmaker, and a documentarian of the human-built landscape. I capture specific moments in time, painting and drawing the in-between spaces and mundane objects that quietly dominate our visual experience of the world. I often work directly from life and primarily en plein air, heavily influenced by the working methods of American street photographers. What does my world really look like? What can I see today that I couldn’t see yesterday and won’t see tomorrow? The Grand Canyon will look the same in 50 years; what about the McDonald’s drive-throughs and Walmart parking lots? How can I evoke future nostalgia?
What inspires you?
Visually, I get excited about color and light in the world around me, especially when that color and light is doing something unexpected. Bright sunlight creates such interesting colors in the shadows, and I have a particular soft spot for night scenes with orange-tinted halogen street lights.
More broadly, I’m obsessed with this desire to capture the now — to mentally project myself into the future and look back at the present to know what images will best represent it. This often means noticing the mundane, or catching things just before they change. An esoteric example: street lights. From about 1970 until about 10 or 15 years ago, most street lights were lit with pinkish-orange sodium or halogen light bulbs. In the last decade or two, many cities and towns have switched over to more energy-efficient LED bulbs, which emit a very bright, blue-tinged white light. I love to paint night scenes where these two types of light intersect — visually, it’s so fun to paint the overlapping of two different colors of light, and conceptually, these scenes capture this specific moment of change in the landscape.
I really geeked out over street lamps a couple of years ago when I was traveling through Lawrence, KS at night. Nearly all the street lamps in Lawrence were emitting this extremely vibrant, unmistakably purple light. As it turns out, the purple light is a specific defect of LED bulbs produced by a specific company during a specific period of time — and it’s happening in cities all over the US. This is the perfect intersection of everything I love to paint: images made of the landscape during this time will forever be recognizable as being made during that time, and the vibrant purples of the failing LED are really rich and fun to paint.
Can you speak about your process?
For the past several years, I have been painting almost exclusively from life. This means that I set up my easel and paints directly in front of the subject I’m painting, which is often a landscape. I always start with a quick ballpoint pen study in a sketchbook to find a strong composition. Then I tape a gessoed piece of watercolor paper to a board or box, tone it with acrylic (usually quinacridone red), and use a palette knife to apply oil paint to the surface. I’m trained as an observational painter.
For a while I was making lots of linocuts from ballpoint pen drawings of landscapes, and I’m now starting to get into intaglio printmaking processes, namely plexiglass drypoint and copperplate etching. I also paint murals and sometimes make giant installations out of weird materials like velvet or office supplies. All of this work comes from a foundation of drawing with a ballpoint pen in a sketchbook, directly from life.
How did you become interested in art?
Like many other artists, my interest in art stems from childhood. I was always making things and my parents really encouraged me to pursue an education and a career in art. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t dream of being an artist when I grew up.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books or quotes?
I have lots! Some of the artists I look to most are: Richard Diebenkorn, Henri Matisse, Wayne Thiebaud, James Turrell, Aaron Douglas, Christo and Jean Claude, Roy Lichtenstein, and Edward Hopper. My partner, Tom Woodruff, is a photographer (and another inspiration), and he has introduced me to so many photographic influences, namely Alec Soth, Martin Parr, and Stephen Shore.
I also have a note in my phone called “Ideas/Inspiration” where I’m constantly collecting new influences. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about summertime, swimming pools, and nostalgia. The HBO series White Lotus was packed with gems of inspiration for me. On the other side of the coin, I re-read Thoreau’s Walden most winters. I love noir fiction and the imagery authors like Raymond Chandler create. I recently re-read The Big Sleep, and found this excellent visual: “The garage doors were shut, but there was an edge of light under them and a thread of light where the halves met.” — so good! Last week I read an article in the New York Times about a TikTok creator named Mackenzie Thomas, who had this great quote: “I’m chasing a belly laugh from myself all the time” — that really resonated with me.
What advice do you have for younger artists?
Don’t worry about finding your “style.” That will come on its own, I promise. The most important thing is to master your technical skills, and to make a lot of work. The only way to get better is to practice, practice, practice. Make a lot of stuff and don’t overthink it. I can’t stress this enough!
Also: prepare yourself for rejection. There are some open calls I’ve been rejected from five or more times. That’s okay! I’ll just keep applying.
Any more thoughts about art, creativity, or anything else you would like to share?
It feels a little silly that I haven’t mentioned this already, but a huge part of my practice has been focused on the two years I spent traveling to all 50 states from 2019 to 2021 — an endeavor I called The 50 States Project.
In the fall of 2019, I set out to capture the human-built American landscape by creating plein air paintings in all 50 states in one year. After 17 states and 4 months of travel, the pandemic hit. I returned home to the DC area, but continued the work of documenting America through the experience of social isolation. Instead of painting landscapes, I turned to still life — rolls of toilet paper, knocked-over lawn chairs, dropped ice cream cones — and quiet scenes of domesticity. These pandemic paintings are silly and a little melancholy. A meaningful painting doesn't always have to be a serious one.
In April of 2021, I got back on the road and made my way through the remaining 33 states over the next 7 months. The completed body of work is a time capsule of over 200 paintings, all small enough to fit in the 8x8” wooden boxes in which I stored them. The paintings I made on the road capture America’s sprawling national aesthetic of big box stores, parking lots, and gas stations. Although I drove over 46,000 miles to paint every state, the paintings all look like Anytown, USA. Our nation is vast, complex, and divided — and yet a visual unity persists.
To learn more about the project check out our website at www.the50statesproject.com.
