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Ron Flemmings

Recollecting his first artistic memory, Ron Flemmings can still hear [[image]] the encouraging words of his mother and feel the weight of his small legs dangling from the kitchen stool. At five years of age, Ron Flemmings became immersed in drawing. As he matured, his natural desire to draw evolved into his need to create. In adulthood, however, Flemmings chose to "get beyond drawing and learn more about composition and color."1

As an artist and a "being-in-the-world,"2 Flemmings is motivated by "things."3 He comments “we have a lot of stuff around us” and as a technician, he draws inspiration from the things we live with daily.4 In particular, Flemmings finds the “out-of-doors”, a fertile area for creative stimulation. His affinity for nature is evident with-in many of his paintings. Whether the subject matter is the isolat-ed alleyways of New York City crunched together by tall concrete urban structures or the varied shades illuminating tranquil gardens, Flemmings captures our natural environment. The artist's finished works reflect the essence of the site, evoking emotions and tapping into the viewer's sensual memories.

Flemmings fascination with color and drawing led him to the art style synchromism. Synchromism meaning ‘with color’ is an artistic style in which paintings are saturated with hues that in turn express content, form and rhythm5. His introduction to synchromism occurred by happenstance. Already an internationally recognized artist, while looking through a magazine, he noticed a familiar color palette in
one of the featured paintings. It was his palette, his colours. After carefully examining the painting, the
intrigued Flemming decided to invite its artist, Clifton Karhu, to his exhibition. Although Karhu was unable
to make it to Flemmings’ show, the two met up later in Kyoto. The next year, Karhu invited Flemmings to study synchromism in Japan, thus beginning a friendship and mentorship which has continued over the past eight years. Karhu's mentorship is priceless, as Flemmings states, “I learned from the master who learned from the master” — that master being Stanton MacDonald-Wright. MacDonald-Wright is one of the two men credited as the founder of the artistic movement/style synchromism6.

While many paintings use color, synchromism understands color as more than a medium to paint with, instead utilizing it as the subject of the painting itself. Flemmings defines synchromism as a phenomenon of colour and music, where color actually becomes rhythmic7. This is evident within paintings such as Palace Garden, wherein tree trunks appear as dancing bodies, twisting, bending and curving with the rhythm of the color palette. 

Without hearing sounds, or seeing a discernable musical subject, sensing rhythm in a painting may seem an unlikely occurrence, but as early as Wilhelm Kandinsky, painters have sought ways to “establish a grammar of painting analogous to the grammar of music.”8

A New York Shadow Oil on Cancas, 2004, 44"x36"

[[right sidebar]] Fifteenyears

“Before I begin to give you an explanation, an explanation which is nearly impossible to give, I would like to empha-size that I have never been politically active in any way. I have only tried to realize my conception of the world as intensely as possible.”
-Max Beckham


Parish Gallery | 1991 to 2005 39 [[//right sidebar]]

Transcription Notes:
not exactly sure how to format the image, but everything should be good.