Karlena Fletcher (she/her) (b. 1999, Little Rock, AR) is an oil painter living and working in Fayetteville, AR as she pursues her MFA in Painting from the University of Arkansas. Karlena received her BFA in Painting summa cum laude 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. Evolving from a background in observational image-making, Karlena meticulously renders compositions that marry perception and imagination as she explores the visual elements of her past that are imprinted on her present.
Karlena’s love of art began at an early age. Her parents gave her a set of colored pencils for Christmas and her dad taught her how to draw. Karlena was fortunate to live overseas and to travel frequently in her younger years, and was exposed to artwork by Renaissance masters and the fathers of modern art. She attended high school at Parkview Arts and Science Magnet in Little Rock, Arkansas where being an artist shifted to the forefront of her identity.
December, 2023