Artist Statement
Fortune Fechtor is a 21 year old who completed her BFA in Painting and Drawing at California College of the Arts. She grew up in Encinitas and spent the last three years living and working in San Francisco.
Her work constructs surreal narrative worlds inhabited by recurring figures, creatures, and emotional landscapes that link to memory, dream, and observation. She is currently in a period of movement and exploration.
Prints will be available soon and, eventually, original works as well once she learns how to part with her babies. As for commissions, Fortune would love to work with you to create something that touches your heart, so feel free to reach out through the contact page.
The worlds I paint do not exist in any place you can physically enter; I construct them in full. Every figure, gesture, object, and environment is deliberate. The image is not abstract or open in its form; I determine its reality (internal logic, visual order) entirely. These paintings operate as parallel worlds, close enough to ours to feel familiar, yet distinct enough to remain autonomous.
My work engages in world building, it more directly visualizes relationships and the way I experience the world. Each painting presents a narrative space inhabited by recurring characters whose every trait carries emotional weight. I define the structure of these worlds with precision and every compositional decision is essential.
Each painting visualizes a network of relationships within its own contained world. When installed together, particularly in a dense arrangement, the paintings enter into a relationship with one another. Characters echo across canvases, environments expand beyond a single frame, and new structural connections appear. What begins as a visualization of relationships within a painting becomes, collectively, a world structured by relationships between paintings. The work forms a world within a world, a layered system of interdependent narratives.
Formally, I work slowly and deliberately, building each painting through accumulated layers of oil. I develop sections independently, allowing them to negotiate their own relationship over time. I reach the final image through incremental adjustments, subtle shifts in tone, and careful rendering. My palette remains muted and slightly antiquated, lending the work a restrained intensity. I often work in response to found frames. When I encounter one, it can become the catalyst for a painting. I prefer discovering the frame first and allowing it to inform the image rather than selecting one after the painting is complete.