An Autumnal Afternoon—Great Lakes Industrial Tableau and Diminuendo, No. 3 is a monotype from 2018 by American artist, Kevin Fletcher. This impression is pencil signed, titled, and dated. It is further inscribed: “a unique print with 'ghost' material utilized from the prior pull but reworked w/darks.” It was printed by the artist on Magnani Pescia soft white and the platemark measures 8-15/16 x 11-7/8 inches.
The word “diminuendo” refers to a decrease in loudness or intensity, and in this monotype the artist appears to use the term to suggest the decline of industrial prowess in the American Midwest - his homeland. Fletcher often returns to themes of working class extinction and the abandonment of one form of progress for another, often at the cost of local prosperity. Yet his work is an ode as much as it is a lament: with Whistlerian tenderness, he renders the angularity of disintegrating warehouses, marinas, and machines against moody atmospheres, juxtaposing former glory with the march of time.
Kevin Fletcher was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1956. He received his BFA in printmaking and graphic design from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1978 and, the following year, he attended Northern Illinois University for graduate study in printmaking and art history. In 1981, he earned his MFA in printmaking from Syracuse University. He taught drawing, printmaking, watercolor, history of printmaking, and western art history courses at the Santa Rosa Junior College in Northern California for thirty years.
Fletcher's work is represented in the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum; City of Portland, Oregon; Cleveland Museum of Art; Jundt Museum at Gonzaga University; Library of Congress; Lowe Art Museum of Syracuse University; Martin von Wagner Museum in Wurzburg, Germany; Portland Art Museum; University of Rochester; University of Wisconsin at Waukesha; the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp and the Centrum Frans Masereel, Kasterlee, Belgium.
