Artist Statement
My life has been a journey of healing through paint. My creative practice is a dialogue between words and images—what I call living2portraits—where life becomes portrait and portrait reflects life. As a homeless youth in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, someone placed oil paints in my hands and told me to paint. I began painting my hopes for peace, freedom, and survival. After serving in the United States Marine Corps and later retiring as a Disabled Veteran, I now work as a Cultural Arts Scholar and Curator. My literature and visual art explore personal memory to illuminate broader social, cultural, and political narratives.
Artist Bio
Randiesia Fletcher, M.Ed., is a Cultural Arts Scholar, Curator, and Master Teaching Artist whose work bridges visual art, literature, and cultural research. Specializing in artistic anthropology and auto-ethnographic practice, Fletcher explores cultural phenomena through her lived experiences, transforming personal narratives into broader reflections on social, cultural, and political realities.
A retired veteran of the United States Marine Corps, Fletcher later became a Tucson Public Voices Fellowship fellow, a program led by the Women’s Foundation for the State of Arizona and the University of Arizona that prepares thought leaders to publish civic commentary. She is an active Op-Ed writer whose essays and cultural commentary have appeared in various news outlets.
Fletcher is the author of three books written primarily in prose. Her most recent work incorporates images, research, and the analysis of text messages to examine themes of mental health, communication, and personal narrative. Her visual practice includes oil painting, oil pastel, ceramics, and printmaking. She trained under renowned master printmaker Andy Rush, expanding her interdisciplinary approach to storytelling through art.
Her work has been showcased at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, reviewed in Natural Awakenings Magazine, and featured in exhibitions including Vision & Sound: An African American Experience at the Sedona Arts Center.
Fletcher’s creative philosophy is rooted in healing and dialogue. As a homeless youth growing up on Skid Row in Los Angeles, she was given oil paints and encouraged simply to paint. That moment began a lifelong practice of using art to process experience and envision possibility. Her process—what she calls “living2portraits”—creates a reciprocal relationship between word and image: life becoming portrait and portrait reflecting life.
Now an independent cultural researcher, Fletcher travels to historically significant sites to conduct research that informs new bodies of artwork, lectures, and storytelling presentations. Through this interdisciplinary practice, she transforms memory, survival, and reflection into creative expressions that invite dialogue, healing, and collective understanding.
Her curatorial and artistic vision is to present exhibitions with meaningful historical context so that audiences can better understand their shared histories. Her mission is to uplift and preserve the stories, histories, and cultural legacy of the African Diaspora
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