In conversation with Betty Fleming
Hosted by Holly Barton at Beer Rebellion for Deer In Traffic.
So, Betty, tell me about your practice.
So, my practice, I'm quite interested in process predominantly more than the image, to be honest. And the process to me is super important. For example, when I walk to the studio, I collect things that I find. And then I bring them in and I work straight from them, straight on the spot, like without too much thought. I think sometimes thought is like...
It can definitely be a barrier to so much.
A massive barrier, yeah. So I try not to think too much about what I'm doing. And I sort of collect all these objects.
So there's like a magnolia tree on my street and I collect the seed pods from that. They're just kind of like bizarre, like just anything that catches my eye.
So your work is quite textile-y.
Yeah, almost. Like very material. Yeah, very material. And then obviously a lot of self-portraiture.
Yeah. That's my main theme. And most of my paintings start as a self-portrait because it's kind of the first thing that I know that I could do just to get the ball rolling.
Do you do that from ease or the fact that you probably know your face so well that it's quite a good like template to have almost?
I don't know it's just kind of infinitely fascinating and also the way the i paint the expression I think are quite interesting as well.
And I often look quite kind of, like, sombre or, like, melancholic, which I'm not sure why that happens. For example, I've got a portrait, which will be in this show, which is a good example of that. Yeah. And it's kind of the constant self-inquiry and turning the lens onto myself and trying to kind of figure out, I don't know, just like my position in the world and what is going on.
But yeah, so to self-portraiture and also being a woman as well today and just trying to figure out what that means and where I sit within that. It's a long thought.
Yeah, it is a long thought. It's a pretty endless journey. It feels ongoing because almost when you're growing up, you have that like weird tween phase where like all of a sudden you're aware of it and then you're like oh how do I be a woman and that question really never gets solved.
Definitely and having the third person monitoring and watching. Yeah so I feel like maybe with self portraiture it's kind of like a an attempt at getting closer to like yourself. But the more self-portraits I do, the more I feel like I'm not there.
Like the physical isn't me, but then I'm kind of like what is, what makes me up?
Tell me more about the objects that get incorporated to your paintings?
Yeah. So I paint with sort of combining the painting with these objects that I find. So on the walk to uni, I'm constantly looking for things to take. And the act of taking those things, like it could be like seed pods or I collect the chipped road paint.
Oh wow!
Yeah. So like the red, specifically the red road paint, because it kind of chips off in these really big chunks. And I collect that and then I can grind that and mix it into the paint.
Which is quite fun to do as well. But yeah, the act of kind of collecting these things, which are very much right in front of me, right under my feet and then using them directly as a grounding tool or kind of a centering or like a navigational thing.
It's like, okay, I'm here, this is what's happening and it makes me feel okay.
It's quite nice that you have like a piece of location within each work.
Yeah.
Do you find that obviously, say you make a painting collecting objects on your way to uni, but have you ever made a painting somewhere else and then you'd look at that and be like, oh, that reminds me of this location.
I'm trying to think about that. I've always collected things, like ever since I was a kid, always collected things. I've got another collection which I collect from wherever I go, which is pencils, and I try to draw with those pencils, which is just quite nice.
it's again that navigational, centering, connection, grounding feeling that just feels really good to me.
It's such a lovely cycle, yeah and i think a lot of art can be quite consumerist because it is always like trying to get the best materials and the most expensive ones whereas like actually just taking things that are no longer needed from the ground and recycling them is so cool.
Yeah, yeah for sure yeah that's become quite a theme for me and then with the paintings themselves and composing the image I don't have any plan, I don't do any sort of preliminary sketches. I don't do any planning whatsoever and I come straight in and I just immediately start painting, I don't think about what reference photos etc it's just like It's all from life.
So it's all straight what's in front of me. And through that process, which is difficult, because not having any plan completely goes against the human nature. So it can be very difficult to kind of figure out where I'm going.
But I'm quite interested in the idea of auto-fiction, which is also being me, about me, what's going on, and my world. And then fiction is slightly embellished or altered version of that. So I see my paintings as very much in an auto-fictional genre.
Tell me a bit more about your process?
So yeah all the objects are things which are right there and I collect them and then I paint them straight into the painting but the composition changes multiple times in order to like try and create some sort of balance or an intentional kind of awkwardness or just some sort of feeling of like completion I guess. um so yeah they kind of are from my life but also very much trying to follow the painting and not dictate it too much. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that makes complete sense. Do you kind of look at it almost as a performance from when you pick it up?
Like the whole process itself, do you look at the act of making a painting as part of it being the art?
I don't necessarily feel like it's performance but it does definitely feel sometimes like it's not painting, it feel like i'm building something and i'm a builder or an archaeologist or something because it's a way for me to be able to uncover things or address things which I can't use my words for. I mean that's one of the greatest things about painting is that you can kind of find a language for things which you can't figure out how to say. So I'd say that that's quite an important thing for me as well. Yeah.
So we just talked about your creative process. Your work is really really pretty and I love the fact of how it's so textured and involved with the world. How did you end up with the style? What was the process to developing? You have quite a signature style now. How did you find finding it?
I think that is a lot to do with who you look at and who I'm inspired by and I quite often like copying the works or drawings of artists that I like. So Soutine or Munch or people like that.
I think also colour is like a really big component, I think it just comes through doing it again and again and you kind of develop a formula that works for you, for example: the colours that you like; the way that you like applying it etc but I try not to be too formulaic. I'm still not sure how I feel about the idea of a style, you know?
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, but I mean, of course you can most of the time tell when somebody's made a specific work, but also I quite like it when something is completely thrown off. When it's so organic. And when something is kind of completely different to the rest of it and it throws you off, but in your parameters of your practice. So I'm not sure. I think it just comes very naturally.
I adore colour.
Yeah, tell me more about that and the process behind the colours that you use.
So with colour, it's very informed by the palette, which is where I have learnt most of my ways of using colour is from the palette. Because on the palette you get to just see paint as paint. And then with how I compose it, you just put it on the palette and you mix it and you don't think about it. And I'm able to use that as a real tool to see things I do.
And I don't change my palette. It's just gets thicker and thicker and it like mixes into one.
I've learned about how to use colour as well through artists that I like.
I think also just seeing things as well like out and about, just colours of the different seasons and the streets and the trees and being in London I think it's a big influence. I mean in nature obviously there's a lot of colour as well but like chimneys I'm really interested in that - the lovely terracota bricks and kind of urban structures as well; graffiti, all sorts, in an eclectic way.
Yeah, it's very interesting like the urban next to the nature in London too, like those sorts of colours of the green, the flowers, whatever, against like bricks and even steel. Does that kind of inform the colour part?
For sure definitely and I like the way that the way that like organic kind of forms and trees sit against like a super man-made measured structured building and I wonder if that shows in my practice but I guess with the kind of seed pods I've always felt like they're very architectural looking objects that's there but you can't break them open they're solid they're like this firm little man-made alien structure.
and then so it's kind of like organic things taking on architectural forms which interests me and then also architectural forms taking on more organic shapes as well, which is what I see as chimneys being almost like sprouting mushrooms or something like that. So I've done a lot of paintings of chimneys and a lot of paintings of these seed pods and then also sometimes cabbages from the supermarket or vegetables that I find, but they all have a pod like shape which I'm very interested in that form.
Yeah, which I think is why it's so repeated in your work.
Yes, yes. And then again with the way that I work, the repetition of just collecting things and working straight from them means that they show up again and again and again and again and again.
But it's kind of nice, it's a signature in a way.
Yeah, I suppose so. I think it will probably change. It will probably change a lot. I'll probably find new objects on the street that I see a repetition of that I'm interested in. And then I'll go with that. But yeah, there's so much that you can find on the floors that it's really weird.
It's quite interesting like through talking to a lot of artists, I've realized how different I think we kind of perceive the world.
It's very much like you do notice all the little things and the beauty in life that people would just throw something away but someone like you is picking it up and actually including it in the work or collecting it and it's just, it's a really beautiful way I think of perceiving life.
I think like also with the fact that I found the seed pods like in the gutter they were like built to be kind of covered in stuff and then you clean them and then it's like you make a whole painting about it. it's actually turns into something so beautiful and important.
when you do this do you think of it in sort of like an environmental perspective like do you recycle these things because it's recycling?
that's honestly not the initial kind of attraction or not the initial spark of what causes me to collect it but I'm very aware of it because I've pretty much spent three or four years studying the roads and the roadmark paint and how it reacts to the changing seasons. I can see now what the heat does to it or what the cold does to it when that comes in so in the autumn the roadmark paint chips a lot more quick a lot more easily because of freezing and thawing and stuff.
it's very much yeah it's going back to that kind of centering and grounding thing but i think the environmental awareness is like a byproduct of just having a kind of eye towards details or just yeah this strange kind of constant searching and collecting I suppose which is kind of what the painting is for me.
So what are your influences? Like who do you really look up to?
I did go to a really cool show yesterday about the East Anglican School of Art at the Garden Museum, which really inspired me. Maggi Hambling went there and Freud went there and it was run by someone called Cedric Morris, who was a really amazing painter, and he painted things in the garden and buildings and he painted a lot of cabbages and fruits, I really like his work and i'm quite excited to go to the studio after this and look at the pictures and see what I can glean from it.
and then like soutine is a big influence, I'm really into soutine.
I'm also really interested in Pam Evelyn, the contemporary abstract painter, because a lot of my paintings start in the first layers killing the white and it's like a total abstract attack onto the canvas and then I work to go over it and use bits of that ground to like come through. But yeah i'm very interested in pam evelyn's work because she's got like a really interesting way of she speaking about like following the line and just how to do that and how it changes according to your mood and to let go.
but naturally, depending on your mood, it changes, or depending on the weather, it changes, or it's very nuanced. And she's got a really interesting way of going through the discomfort and all of the emotions that you can feel.
So I'm very interested in her at the moment. I'm very interested in a guy called Igor Moritz as well whose paintings have such a lot of information about colour and a lot to learn about colour and composition. So yeah, those are probably my main influences at the moment.
Yeah, you mentioned Munch earlier, is he an influence with the oil pastels he uses?
I actually don't use oil pastels. A lot of people have asked if I do but it's because I do that layer underneath and then I go on top of it. All the paints dry at different times because they're all different brands and stuff. So if I leave it until it looks slightly tacky and when I drag another colour onto it it leaves this sticky texture. So it looks like an oil pastel. But yeah, it's not oil pastel at all.
But I like Munch's kind of, I like the melancholy and the beauty of that. The breeding of emotions that he always puts to his eye. And he's, I don't know if I would be able to, but he's got a show in Hamburg. There's a show, a retrospective of him and Maria Lassnig, who I'm also really interested in.
And they both have this very strange and interesting and prolific way of just, like, showing, heavy, weighty kind of emotions. I mean, that's not really doing it justice at all, or describing what I think about it. But they're an interesting pair to put together. Yeah and Maria Lassnig is, again, someone I'm learning a lot from at the moment.
What is your next project? So you recently did an exhibition inside your house?
Yeah, I did a show in my house just around the corner from here.
Which I think is so incredible. I think a lot of people always forget how accessible art can actually be. I mean and putting it inside a house where it's like so open and it kind of gives that sense of community.
Tell me more about the process behind that exhibition.
Yeah, so that was, I knew that I wanted to do a show soon 'cause I have so many paintings now, which I just wanna get out there and talk to people to find more like-minded people which is kind of the aim of the game for me and so i selected two painters who i really liked.
So I reached out and then I kind of curated it all and then had a private view and then we had like a series of booked appointments throughout the weekend as well. It was an interesting experience. It's hard to know how to do those things without it taking away from your painting too much. because you're so occupied by all these kind of like almost events based things and I just I knew that I wanted it to be a certain standard so it was alot but it was a really awesome experience and it was great to talk to people about the work and like how they thought we were linked and stuff like that but yeah so that was the project that I recently did and then upcoming projects would probably be the research festival which we are doing at the South London Gallery with my MA at Camberwell painting.
yeah we do a research festival at south london gallery and it could be a talk it could be a book but basically stuff other than your painting so yeah that that'll be my next project coming up which i'm very excited for. i'm not sure what i'm gonna do for it yet um but maybe a book, i think a book could be nice
yeah! do you have any ideas of like what will go inside the book? I don't know, maybe like it'd be cool to do some sort of like quite basic catalogue you know or something and then include some of my writing which I do a lot of writing as well so.
Tell me more about your writing!
Yeah well I mean it's interesting because I've always found words very difficult, I find words very unsuccessful at expressing what I actually feel. And painting is good in that sense because it kind of bypasses my conscious thoughts so I'm expressing stuff that you don't actually have to think through. I don't have to think about it and it's still like real but that being said i do also find writing very helpful in relation to painting so like i mean again it's very autobiographical and also fictional but i write a lot just day to day about my experiences what's happened but i also am interested in kind of pushing the more poetic kind of like creative writing element.
So I wrote like, or I tried to map out like a short play, which I created, which was about someone's walk from their house to their place of work and all the things that they encounter on the way in. And then thinking about like, as a play, what rehearsals would look like. and trying to jump as many layers and remove as possible from the original concept helps me to then be able to access something. Something about creating all these stepping stones away from the simple thoughts.
But like sometimes if you make a play and then you make a short story and then you make a painting from a painting from a painting and then you kind of create this domino. effect, you never end up with what you began.
I find sometimes by adding all those layers allows you to access something which like you weren't able to access through the first level, which is maybe just talking but like yeah paintings within paintings or painting the studio or painting myself in the studio and then making a painting from that - all those levels of remove allows me to kind of access things which I don't feel able to address consciously if that makes sense.
maybe that's related to why my paintings are quite heavy or a bit kind of melancholic they don't necessarily feel melancholic but when you do that domino effects it can be quite surprising what you find at the end.
and also posing more questions than answers.
i think art is so much where you end up with more questions than actually yeah painting to answer something.
yeah i mean i'm still learning so much, i always will be you know. learning about how expression works and how I'm able to achieve it and sometimes you do get more out of a question than an answer. it's quite a simple fact of that I suppose.
I feel like I've spoken quite generally but with the paintings in this show specifically, I mean I'd be interested to hear what other people think about it. It's quite nice to not give too much away but the titles maybe are a bit of a clue as to what's going on.
And then also with the large portrait of the figure with the yellow hair is just like a fun point.
That's Anna who works behind the bar, so let's try and spot her.
Betty Fleming's show will be on display at Beer Rebellion from the 5th of August 2026.
Private view 7pm 05.08.26
Beer Rebellion, 129 Queen’s Rd, London, SE15 2ND
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