Thursday, July 14 – Saturday, September 3, 2022
Reception: September 2nd, First Friday, 6-8pm
August 20th, 2pm: David Fleming in Conversation with Maureen Davidson, curator and art critic
Join us in the gallery to meet artist David Fleming and learn about his creative process and experience.
David Fleming is a painter of many styles and techniques. He explores and expands on earlier American and European painting, while making these traditions “his own.
“I am a painter of many styles and techniques. I explore and expand on earlier American painting, particularly the Ashcan School, and earlier European painting, such as the Post-Impressionists and the Fauves. The San Francisco School, including Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff, as well as contemporary painters, such as Adrian Ghenie, Christopher Brown, and Henry Taylor, have also been highly influential. I am proud to stand on the shoulders of the greats, while making what I’ve learned from them “my own.” This retrospective of my oil and acrylic paintings covers about three decades. Lately, I’ve been attempting to become “innocent” in my work, shedding more traditional ways of doing art.”
After graduating from San Jose State, David Fleming was a car stylist for Ford in Detroit, and for Porsche in Germany. Fleming also designed at Lockheed before returning to San Jose State to study painting and to teach art and design. Fleming has won many awards.
David Fleming participates in Santa Cruz County Open Studios. He has shown his work at Cabrillo and Monterey Pacific Colleges, Pacific Grove Art Center, Santa Cruz County Government Building, Santa Cruz Art League, and Smith Gallery at UCSC, Pajaro Valley Arts; Blitzer, Radius, and Triton Galleries; Museum of Art and History, and other locations in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Maureen Davidson is a Scottish-born writer, editor, curator, critic, cultural worker whose career in the arts began in London developing a cinema magazine, leaped over a continent to write, promote and fundraise for arts organizations including Long Beach Museum of Art where she was Deputy Director, and for which she developed and edited an international video art magazine. As Executive Director of Ventura Arts Council, she developed an Arts Center and Ventura’s first curated contemporary gallery and performance space, a grants for artists program and several arts festivals including an award-winning festival of indigenous arts. As curator there she most notably organized a controversial anti-war exhibition during the Bush-Saddam Hussein deadline. She later directed Spokane Art Center/Center for the Visual Arts, curating a gallery, running festivals, doing publications and establishing Washington’s first art program in prisons. When not working in the arts, she served as Public Information Officer for large government agencies.
