News Spring 2025 Nouvelles, Printemps 2025
Oeuvres de Simon Fletcher a La Croix Belle Puisalicon pour La Nuit Blanche, Musiqu e, Vins et arts de 1800h a00h organise par Project Butterfly, Puisalicon
On the 7th June at Puisalicon the Croix Belle will be hosting some paintings for La Nuit Blanche, an evening of art and wine to celebrate the spring organised by the 'Project Butterfly' -
Wine Tastings and music from 1800h until 00h
https://butterflylieuculturel.fr/
Dorset England 16th June AT 1800H. A short talk about my life in painting at ABBOTSBURY LANDSCAPE FESTIVAL
https://www.abbotsbury.co.uk/2023/05/23/abbotsbury-open-gardens-introducing-the-festival-of-landscape-art/
Simon Fletcher. Born Birmingham 1948
After completing his diploma in Fine Art at Farnham, Fletcher was employed as a draughtsman in a garden design company where he polished his drawing technique before devoting himself to painting.
Living in Oxford he began painting portraits and exhibited twice at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
He also made a series of etchings of Spanish landscapes during this period.
Moving to France in 1982 he began making contacts in Germany as well as France. A contemporary of German and Austrian painters such as G Salzmann, G Richter, R Fetting, Fletcher made a close study of the German expressionist painters, many of whom worked in watercolour.
As he began to exhibit, Fletcher's work entered major international collections such as The City of Sienna, The Sultanate of Oman, The Sultanate of AbuDhabi, The Hitachi Corporation, The City of Vienna, Oxford University, Bibliotheque National Paris.
Nine books have been published about his work in English, French, Italian and German and in 2012 Bloomsbury London published his handbook, The Painter's Studio. Some of these books are still available.
He has exhibited with many well known contemporaries both in England and Europe. For some years he had a residency in Ravello on the Amalfi coast of Italy and in 2016 a retrospective exhibition of his work was organised by the Modern Art Museum of Salerno and he published a new portfolio of prints, Ravello 5, in 2022.
A new book of paintings and drawings about the landscape of the Aude department of France, with texts by Rupert Wright, will be published in 2025
Après avoir obtenu son diplôme en beaux-arts à Farnham, Fletcher a travaillé comme dessinateur dans une entreprise de conception de jardins où il a perfectionné sa technique avant de se consacrer à la peinture.
Résidant à Oxford, il a commencé à peindre des portraits et a exposé deux fois à la National Portrait Gallery de Londres.
Il a également réalisé une série d'eaux-fortes de paysages espagnols durant cette période.
Arrivé en France en 1982, il a noué des contacts en Allemagne et en France. Contemporain de peintres allemands et autrichiens tels que G. Salzmann, G. Richter et R. Fetting, Fletcher a étudié de près les expressionnistes allemands, dont beaucoup travaillaient à l'aquarelle.
Lors de ses premières expositions, ses œuvres ont intégré de grandes collections internationales telles que celles de la Ville de Sienne, du Sultanat d'Oman, du Sultanat d'Abou Dhabi, de Hitachi Corporation, de la Ville de Vienne, de l'Université d'Oxford et de la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris.
Neuf ouvrages sur son œuvre ont été publiés en anglais, français, italien et allemand. En 2012, Bloomsbury Londres a publié son manuel, The Painter's Studio. Certains de ces ouvrages sont toujours disponibles.
Il a exposé avec de nombreux contemporains célèbres, en Angleterre et en Europe. Il a séjourné quelques années à Ravello, sur la côte amalfitaine, en Italie. En 2016, une rétrospective de son œuvre a été organisée par le Musée d'Art Moderne de Salerne. Il a publié un nouveau portfolio de gravures, Ravello 5, en 2022.
Un nouveau livre de peintures et de dessins sur les paysages de l'Aude, avec des textes de Rupert Wright, paraîtra en 2025.
Lunas Right Bank, aquarelle 30x50 2018
Four fold Pink, aquarelle 40x 40 2023
Yellow Mint Pastel 56x72 2006
Dubai, Sheik Zaied Road III 36 x 56 cm
From a series of paintings from UAE
Installation L'Ortensia 2024 St Gervais sur Mare
Etaing 60 x 80 2024 mixed media on board
Swimming Pool series 2023 mixed media on paper
Sculpture study 12x17 mixed media on paper
Swimming pool series I 38x28 mixed media on paper
Pastel, The Long Table 120cm x 80cm.
This was the painting, done in my garden,
that gave Rick Stein the idea to film his episode
of 'A French Odyssey' in that location.
Collioure Hotel
Blue water, 60x90, 2023 mixed media 2023
Fine art colour prints in open editions are now available from Bridgeman Prints.uk and Meisterdrucke.uk
Editioned prints are available from my Gallery, The Art Gallery 17, F34610 France No2 Farm North Menorca, etching. Edition of 10 on hand made paper £750. Plate size 20x30cm
No3 Woman in the mirror, woodcut. Edition of 18 on hand made paper £600. Sycamore block
Ravello 5
A new suite of five prints of Ravello, Italy, in a limited edition of ten folios.
Each print is signed, titled and numbered including the folio number.
The prints were made using the sugar lift etching technique on copper plates which were then photographed at high resolution and printed on Somerset cotton rag paper using Epson lightfast inks
The folio costs 1500€ for the five prints and the folio itself is made from cotton rag 350gm paper
This offer is limited to ten folios only.
To receive one please email Simon Fletcher at movingbrush@gmail.com
Below is Ravello 5 No 4
Mural for the French Association for the handicapped near Montpellier France.
16 x 9 metres printed on stretched polyester
My studio gallery is open for visitors by appointment
Atelier Galerie ouvert sur RDV
+33 623921960
Interview with the painter. https://youtu.be/SOey3zIFHe8
Testimonials SEE WORKSHOPS
Decoration for a client in Geneva 6000x900mm
A permanent exhibition of work is on show at
The Art Gallery17 .
movingbrush@gmail.com
Please contact me if you wish to visit the gallery.
......................................................................................................
a new series painted in my Moroccan studio.
each 650€ unframed
http://bridgeman-images.com/23OM-4ZP6K-52HD44LZ61/cr.aspx
n
Getting inside the painter’s mind
Simon Fletcher is one of the best watercolour painters around. He has spent over 30 years refining his technique, which is a mile away from the British tradition, and closer to that of the Austrian and German expressionists, such as Emil Nolde, Oscar Kokoschka and Karl Schmitt-Rottluff.
When asked, out of the blue, two years ago to produce a mural covering 50 square metres of a wine estate building in southern France, Simon saw it as the opportunity of a lifetime to explore and explode the essence of the watercolourist’s art– literally by blowing up his work.
This is not as easy as it sounds. The essence of watercolour is the transparency of many pigments and the whiteness of the paper illuminating the image from inside. Blowing up a watercolour using traditional enlargement methods tends to reduce the illumination to an insipid greyness.
But with graphic techniques applied by his son Gerry, who works as a graphic designer at the BBC, the intensity of the paint stays the same regardless of the magnification. So the viewer is confronted, not by a sea of pixels, as in a Roy Lichtenstein classic, but by intense brushmarks and contrasts. It is if a giant hand using gallons of paint has been at work. You see the individual atoms of pigment mingled in organised fractal chaos.
For the first time, perhaps, the art of the watercolourist is revealed in amazing detail on the big screen.
Peter and Susan Close, who commissioned the work for Chateau Complazens, their winery near Narbonne, asked for an unusual mural. What they have ended up with is an extraordinary adventure into the possibilities that the digital age offers to watercolour.
The mural will be opened to the public on Saturday June 28th. There is a special press opening on Friday July 4th.
www.camplazens.com +33 (0) 468 453 889
www.simonfletcher.org +33 (0) 467 236 528 +33 (0) 623921960
David Shirreff, formerly with
The Economist helped to organise an exhibition of Simon's work sponsored by The Economist