A Strange Inheritance
A Strange Inheritance
The official site of Jack R. Fletcher
The official site of Jack R. Fletcher
Best viewed on a computer.
Best viewed on a computer.
Enigmatic + Bizarre. The works of Jack Fletcher, most hidden away for decades, discovered after his passing in 1998.
Enigmatic + Bizarre. The works of Jack Fletcher, most hidden away for decades, discovered after his passing in 1998.
A bikini-clad, erotically posed woman licks the nose of a Concorde supersonic jet. A Native American sits yogi-style contorted in Escher-like complexity, around an ice cream cone. An ominous enormous joker leers from behind the wings of a topless crying angel.
How to describe the paintings of Jack Raymond Fletcher?
Nightmarish? Surreal? Or just a big joke on us all?
No one can ask him. The artist passed in '98 at age 75, leaving behind a legacy of paintings, constructions, and collages all as enigmatic and bizarre as the man himself.
Fletcher, who in the waning years of his life became reclusive, especially about his work. Hidden away from sight for decades, these unsettling paintings now belong to his estranged daughters.
As a budding young artist in the '50s, Fletcher co-founded the legendary Men of Art Guild (MOAG), in San Antonio, TX. A native of the city, Jack was part of a coterie of talented artists. The guild provided the first venue of its kind for artists, a place where they could come together and talk, drink, argue, and of course create art. MOAG helped transform San Antonio from a sleepy backwater province to a place where art and the artist mattered.
Jack was an angry man usually fueled by scotch, but at some point in his life, he became even more bitter. Once he got a call from a gallery that told him a client was interested in buying one of his works and wanted to know if they could meet him. Fletcher promptly showed up and said, "if someone wants to buy my art it must not be good enough" and he took it home.
Go figure.
What were his demons? His passions? His fears?
In his last years, he no longer showed his work but keep painting at light speed.
Fletcher began his career in art as a teenage cartoonist with membership in the Ink Slingers, a national organization in the 40s. He studied at the Warren Hunter School of Art in SA. After serving in the Air Force during WW2 he attended Trinity University, where he was the staff cartoonist for the school paper. He also attended The Art Center School in San Antonio, Texas, and The Student Art League in New York.
His paintings, collages, and other works had been exhibited and purchased by museums and collectors throughout the state, and nationally.
For years Fletcher carried on a correspondence with famed artist Robert Rauschenberg, by whom he was deeply influenced. You can see Rauschenberg's touch, in part, in the sardonic titles Jack gave his paintings.
Viewing Fletcher's works is like glimpsing some macabre dreamscape, where El Greco meets Dali where even mundane objects become vaguely menacing.
What the hell is he trying to tell us? The dark imaginings of some disturbed soul? The twisted commentary of a twisted world? Or are we meant to just laugh?
Of course, now, we can never know.
Mary, his oldest, has cried too many tears over this madman that was her dad and it's way past time to let him go. By releasing Jack's brilliant and creative works, Mary, an artist in her own right seeks to share Jack's art so long hidden from the world.