MY ARTISTIC STORY
Hi there! I'm Emily Fletcher, another 20-something with small town origins out here just trying to make it. After high school I left that small town of Forsyth, Georgia and headed to Athens to cheer on the Dawgs- and work on a degree, of course. In four very quick years, I had a Bachelor of Arts in Advertising, a minor in Studio Art, and a million questions about what was next. I'm now living in Atlanta, working a 9-5 advertising job and finding out what it's like to finally have free-time again-- time that I dedicate to painting.
From a young age I've always had a love for creating; as a kid I picked up every art supply I could find and went to work on my next masterpiece. My mom took note of that and put me in a few art lessons taught by locals so I could grow that creative side. I stuck with art through high school with classes here and there, but nothing really pushed me to try anything outside of my watercolor and acrylic comfort zone until I got to college. When my advisor informed me that I was on track to graduate early, I quickly denied that and added a Studio Art minor. The very next week, into the Lamar Dodd School of Art I went. The exposure I received there to such a wide variety of techniques, media and ideas in just a few courses really transformed my work. The most major changes for me came with the introduction to oil paint and the encouragement to go big.
ABOUT THE WORK
With my work, what you see is what you get- no underlying meanings or wild concepts. After accepting I wasn't a big fan of conceptual work, one of my college professors began pushing me to take my work larger since I wasn't going to go deeper. I finally caved and struggled in with a 4 foot by 5 foot canvas one day. Along with successfully shocking my professor, I also found a new love for working on a large scale and have begun truly defining my style. Turns out photorealism is my thing and a larger canvas allows me the space to emphasize the details needed to make you question- is it a photograph or is it a painting? As a young "artist" I'm still figuring things out and I've used recent work to delve into color studies, push the limits of perspective, and explore challenging surfaces and materials. I hope that I can always continue to grow my work and I'm excited to see where that will take me!