About

Imogen Fleming (b.2002) is a South London based artist.

Spanning mixed-media painting, drawing and printmaking, Imogen’s practice investigates and disrupts the traditional hierarchies of Western art, specifically targeting the historical delegitimisation of subjects, materials and processes associated with women. Imogen deliberately embraces an aesthetic often dismissed as girlish and unserious, her works are unapologetically sentimental, maximalist and romantic - characterised by segmented blocks of vibrant colours and patterns, and themes of friendship and beauty.

She reinterprets mundane and domestic scenes to spotlight their inherent intimacy, beauty and detail, focusing on the insignificant details of clothes and furnishings. This imagery stems from the act of noticing; a practice rooted in mindfulness techniques used as a coping mechanism for anxiety. Utilising abstracting techniques such as tightly cropped compositions, flattened perspectives, and vivid colour palettes, Imogen portrays everyday scenes in a new light. Drawing on Matisse’s philosophy that colour has no obligation to represent reality, she exaggerate colours, working with palettes sampled from nature.  

Central to her practice is the celebration of female relationships and platonic love. The artist positions friendship as a sustaining source of love, worthy of artistic attention. Similarly, the floral compositions reframe a genre which women were historically restricted to, working with oil pastel in heavy, scrawling gestures rather than rendering delicate petals in a neutral palette. 

Imogen is interested in the symbiotic relationship between flora and society: our trends and styles mimic the patterns and colours of the natural world, and our gatherings and behaviours reflect organic formations. The figurative and floral strands of her work exist in constant dialogue. 

Materially, the paintings function as collages, forcing stylistically contrasting moments to butt together – realistic faces, flat colour, patterns, embroidered details and ambiguous forms. Imogen views painting from an expanded definition and incorporates embroidery and mixed-media to honour the legacy of women’s crafts as equally worthy as Fine Art.