NCWC News: Four Sisters Gallery Opens Eugenia Fleming Exhibit

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October 18, 2004

Four Sisters Gallery Opens Eugenia Fleming Exhibit

Rocky Mount, N.C.—Richmond, Virginia, self-taught artist Eugenia Fleming will meet the public at a reception that marks the opening of an exhibit of her drawings and paintings on Thursday, October 21, at 8 p.m. in the Four Sisters Gallery of the Pearsall Building at North Carolina Wesleyan College. The exhibit is free and open to the public. It will run through December 12, from 9-5 Monday - Friday and 9-noon Saturday.

Without any formal art training, Fleming draws small flights of fancy in ballpoint and pencil that might look like a rain of tears or an airborne storm of dandelion seeds. Some of her drawings are complicated, some are deceptively simple, but all are imaginative and express moods, from light and happy to solemn. The artist plays hide and seek with faces and uses interlacing patterns not unlike a snakes and ladders game board.

After a 14-year career in the Army, Fleming worked as a security guard in Richmond while studying cosmetology. She is now studying to be a paralegal. Much of her artwork is the byproduct of that "downtime" security guards experience while restricted to their posts when on duty. Because Fleming has loved making art since childhood, drawing and painting with watercolor comes naturally. Her methods are her own invention, different drawing tools and line qualities will achieve different things. She might use wispy lines to express flowers blowing in the breeze or a sea of sharp angular shapes to express agitation.

The Four Sisters Gallery is dedicated to recognizing the self-taught and visionary artists of the Coastal Plain, from Richmond to Charleston. Visionary artists tend to work out of the mainstream of conventional art institutions and sometimes are overlooked because of their circumstances or because their imaginative art doesn't fit the expected mold.

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