University Library Following Loma Prieta Earthquake (for Jimmie Earl)

Kevin Fletcher

At a casual glance Kevin Fletcher's monotypes can appear to be photographic, with their rich blacks and silvery grays but, upon further examination, are anything but photographic. Fletcher's images are spontaneous and, after pulling the paper from the matrix, he assigns each work a title, often based on his first response and his active imagination. It is up to the viewers to draw their own conclusions.

This composition refers to the devastation done by the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake which occurred in the San Francisco/Oakland area, collapsing the Oakland-Bay Bridge and feeway. Fletcher imagines the chaos in the University library as books and shelving are scattered throughout the confining room.

In an October 13, 2007 review of Fletcher's monotypes in a San Francisco exhibition, San Francisco Chronicle reviewer Kenneth Baker made the following observations:

"North Bay artist Kevin Fletcher has verged on the topical now and then in his masterly monotypes, evoking industrial architecture - and thus, industrialism - in ruins…. Contemporary graphic art does not get any better.

Fletcher can stand comparison with Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), whose etchings of imaginary prison interiors they sometimes bring to mind. Fletcher has added monochrome tints to several of the new prints, enhancing their suggestions of smoky light."