Karlena Fletcher (she/her) (b. 1999, Little Rock, AR) is a mixed-media artist living and working in Fayetteville, AR. She earned her MFA in Painting from the University of Arkansas in 2026 and her BFA in Painting from Boston University in 2021. Karlena has a passion for improving accessibility in the visual arts and building connections with other disabled artists as she embraces her identity as a chronically ill and neurodivergent maker.
Many years of disruptions, diagnoses, and revelations caused Karlena to re-evaluate her motivations in the studio, ultimately leading her back to her most inherent ways of creating, thinking, and encountering the world. In her studio, Karlena seeks out tactile stimulation, pays great attention to detail, finds peace in repetitive motion, and embraces slowness. Her genre-bending, abstractly designed compositions marry observation and invention for the purpose of gaining clarity about her relationships to the people and places who have molded her identity over time. Since childhood, Karlena has been extremely fascinated with her immediate surroundings, seeing immense beauty in the things we take for granted, and finding meaning in peripheral subjects.
2024
2021
2021
