Saul Fletcher, a self-taught artist who first started taking photographs of the lush rural landscape surrounding his childhood home in England’s Lincolnshire County, is best known today for his somber, dreamlike pictures. While images of Fletcher’s friends, family, personal artifacts, and physical surroundings are included in his oeuvre, the artist’s studio wall features prominently in his work too. Punctured and smudged, the site functions as a backdrop for countless eerie, sometimes ghoulish installations composed of old books, dried leaves, string, and animal carcasses. The resulting images are deceptively simple, despite the feelings of melancholy, loneliness, and morbidity that they so palpably convey.

Fletcher’s work has been exhibited extensively, including at London’s Courtaud Gallery, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, MUMOK in Vienna, Tate Modern in London, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, among others.

[Artspace]