Shipyard Workers and Cut Up Tramp Steamer at Bayside Berth

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.

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."

Fletcher wrote in May 2017: "When I begin the monotypes, I don't have a particular goal in mind. My use of tools and an opening gambit will expose a set of possible directions. As the marks begin to overlap in at least three different areas of the ('field') rectangle, one can see a structure surface, gradually come into focus that, by associative memory, bears its meaning and balance. Patterns of light and shadow, elements of water and gases (steam) are introduced to give natural forms a presence against architectonic ones.

The collective impact is a memory-based image, suggestive of a place, rather than being dedicated to exactitude and specificity. The speed of execution keeps the result hopefully fresh-looking and immediate, a bit spontaneous. A tension also comes from what some may consider a lack of finish and details. A pleasing result must be 'discovered,' not 'illustrated.' I find the eventual resolve of an image to sometimes defy an exact characterization. It may simply find stasis or climax based on techniques used."