November 2025

Doreen Fletcher

Doreen created her own biography to accompany the piece

Doreen was born in 1952 into a working-class family in the Midlands. As an only child, her parents, who were barely literate themselves, wanted the very, very best for her. At the age of five she was given a set of encyclopaedias purchased ‘on the never, never’ from a travelling salesman. These were the first books to enter the house. Doreen, barely able to read more than a couple of words, was entranced by the coloured pictures of paintings. She still remembers the pleasure of seeing ‘The fighting Temeraire’ by Turner and immediately wanted to copy it.

Her dad took her to Miss. Waites’ toy shop ‘up town’ where she insisted on having the ‘best’ crayons, ie the most expensive. 6 years later, she passed the 11 plus and won a scholarship to a grammar school where most of the girls came from ‘other side of the tracks’. Doreen felt isolated, didn’t live in the right sort of house on the right side of town and spoke with a different accent. She retreated more and more into the world of reading/writing and drawing/painting. Her fate was decided  by the teachers she had at the age of 14. The English teacher was loud, theatrical and gathered a coterie of girls around her who were precocious, the daughters of professors from the local university. She was contemptuous of the awkward, shy but bolshy schoolgirl.  The Art teacher was reserved and strict, yet passionate about art history and painting. He taught the fundamentals  with a rigour that suited the precise, exacting nature of Doreen. Such are lives decided, almost on the toss of a coin!

TS: How long have you lived in this area?

DF: 18 years here in Forest Gate. Before that I was in Poplar or Limehouse, if you want to be posh, for 23 years; prior to that Paddington for 7 years, 5 years in Wimbledon. I spent the first 20 years in Newcastle-under-Lyme, a dormitory town of Stoke-on-Trent which I left as soon as I could.

TS: Do you go back ever?

DF: I used to but stopped when my mother died 7 years ago, my modus vivendi  in life since I was 14 has been drawing/ painting, that's my raison d'etre. Although I've never lived alone and I am naturally quite sociable, I don’t have much time to socialise because I’m so obsessed with what I do.

“My modus vivendi in life since I was 14 has been drawing/ painting , that's my raison d'etre.”

TS: If you’re working a lot and then finish for the day, do you get the urge to be with people or socialise??

DF: When I was young I used to celebrate completing a painting by getting drunk with friends at the pub, i would work very intensely, sometimes 10 hours a day on one painting until it was, to my mind, finished. This contrast of working in isolation then a period of hectic revelry was an integral part of my life.

TS: I know it's sort of a cliche that if you have a family or to a lesser extent partners you kind of sacrifice your work for that, or somehow you can’t have both things. Is there something about painting? Do you think it's different, like it requires you to lock in for longer?

DF: I never really thought of it in those terms but I've never, ever wanted children, even my dog Charlie I had to be persuaded to get.

TS: Because it gets in the way of your time?

DF: Yes it's all about time, I just have to do it, to work. If I could work exclusively , I would.

TS: Could you do it piecemeal? Half an hour here and there ? Or do you have to do long chunks?

DF: These days I never work more than 4 or 5 hours a day, but this is every day, seven days a week.  I often do 2 hrs , take a break then another 2 or 3. 

TS: And are you a night worker or do you need the light, the daylight ?

DF: No, I never ever work through the night, although I can use electric light during the winter when it gets dark early. Ideally I’ll work from 12 - 6 just thinking, looking and painting but after that, there’s social media to deal with. I do that to get exposure but it’s a two-way process, one has to reciprocate and follow other artists, all that takes time.

TS: Yes If you're gonna be genuine! you have to actually spend time looking at people’s work still, you can easily just say, oh, I love that or something, without having really looked at it. 

I think the first time I saw your work was at the Nunnery Gallery, a solo show in 2019, January . I remember really loving the bricks, the brickwork, Flemish bond etc

DF: I do like bricks! Where I grew up in a two-up two-down, terraced house, there were lots and lots of dull red bricks, grass was rare.  The odd yellow dandelion,  a treasure trove of colour. 

TS: I was trying to imagine if it was pleasurable doing brick after brick or a bit more of a chore to do.

DF: I think it's a bit of both, I think probably it’s a bit of a security blanket. I always get slightly anxious when I start a painting. I´ve recently started painting the Wanstead flats and I get very panicky with the expanse of emptiness.

TS: And when you’re starting a new piece what’s the literal process, do you go and sketch or take photos?

DF: Lots and lots of photographs at different times of day in different moods, sometimes I follow on with a drawing, finally synthesising various elements into a satisfying composition 

"I've never, ever wanted children, even my dog Charlie I had to be persuaded to get. .”

Upstairs in the Studio

TS: Is that pencil drawing? Wow, it's so detailed. Can I have a closer look?

DF: Yes of course. I used photographs that I took with a bellows camera and developed myself in the darkroom. 

TS: It’s almost like photorealism, do you have to blow the photograph up to be able to draw something so detailed? That's really really nice.

DF: I employed the grid method of squaring up. They hated it, my mum thought she looked cross but she often was cross!  At least she wasn’t wearing her apron which she was in other drawings! I was an only child.

TS: Ok, how long ago was this?

DF: 53 years ago

TS: I wonder what that this is there (pointing at small detail by the front door area)

DF: Don’t you know ?? It’s a foot scraper, for your boots when you’d been out walking. Where did you grow up??

TS: In Northamptonshire

DF: Oh well so you should know! There’s lots of red brick buildings in Northampton too, but I guess you are too young to remember endless streets of terraced housing which were demolished in the late sixties, early seventies. 

TS: Those bricks in the picture are Flemish bond; that’s my obsessive brick knowledge coming out

DF: Oh thank you, you taught me something!

TS: When you think about your parents now, does that drawing end up becoming one the mental pictures of them, you know, in the way photographs can kind of end up pushing in for memories

DF: Not really,  I did quite a lot of other drawings of them at that time, on holiday in a caravan at Borth.

TS: It’s so good, technically as well.

DF: Probably I should’ve been better known than I am but the kind of subjective realism I was into 50 years ago became very out of date in the seventies, even more so in the eighties, the interest was large abstracts and conceptual art. 

TS: Did that bother you, the lack of interest?

DF: Not really. I just carried on with recording what concerned me personally. I didn’t try to change but that also meant for years and years nobody was really interested in exhibiting the paintings and drawing, at least not after the arrival of the YBAs such as Damien Hurst. I was considered old fashioned. It amuses me and pleases me a great deal that these days that younger painters like what I do and some even consider me trendy!  

TS: Fashion’s like a roundabout, it kind of just goes round and round, so you just carried on. When was it then that some people started saying, oh, hold on this is something, was there a particular time when you started to get a bit more noticed ??

DF: In 2026 I met Paul, of The gentle author who runs a blog called SpitalfieldsLife and he liked my work very much because of the east end connection and persuaded me to show him ‘the paintings in the attic’ which he published as a blog that aroused great interest. I was then offered an exhibition of these 1980’s paintings at Townhouse in Spitalfields by Fiona Atkins, that was a great success. 

However I don't consider myself an east end painter, I’m just a painter who paints wherever I happen to be.

‘ Probably I should’ve been better known than I am but the kind of subjective realism I was into 50 years ago became very out of date in the seventies, even more so in the eighties, the interest was focused on large abstracts and conceptual art’

TS:  When I first saw some of your pictures I really liked them, there weren't many people in them and it had this kind of emptiness and other quality about them,  I can't quite put my finger on what it is.

DF: I always like to focus on a feeling of mystery or expectation in my paintings and, if the image doesn’t contain that element, I will attempt to create it.

TS- Do you ever end up doing one and it's not got that feeling. 

DF- Oh yes! There’s a store room full of them!!

TS: They’re a bit like that Italian painter De Chirico,  he's one of my favorites. 

DF Yes De Chirico ! He’s got that mystery and ‘Je ne sais quoi’ 

TS: I suppose people also love the East end paintings because they’re like a document, another record of these places and times 

DF- Most people who buy my paintings,  and I’ve been lucky in recent years to sell virtually all the east London paintings that I’ve done, have a connection to the area, although, recently that has begun to change, I’ve begun to make pictures that could be anywhere or nowhere, like the fairground paintings for example

TS: Are all the pictures with colored pencils? Do you have one kind of medium that you prefer working in more than others or do you just mix it ?

DF: I don’t mix it. I use either oil on canvas, coloured pencil on paper or graphite on paper.  oil, colour pencil on paper. 

TS: Acrylic?

DF: No I don’t like acrylic

TS: (Picking up a painting) How long would something like this take you? Do you think roughly?

DF: Two weeks, 4 or 5 hours a day, seven days a week full time, until it’s reached a satisfactory stage and that’s being modest, then I would walk away and return to tweak or revise completely weeks or months later. This process could go on for a year or more.

 TS: Can you erase it when it's color pencil ??

DF: No you can’t . So I start with pencil,  ordinary graphite which you can erase, then lightly shade using coloured  pencils, gradually build up the density of colour and tone with endless layers. I’ve got over 500 colour pencils ! I do like specific  brands for particular tones, same with oil paints. The last two drawings I did were sold to someone at the Townhouse Gallery during the Summer,  so I can’t show you I’m afraid.

Framing and French Works

DF: A lot of my recent paintings are at the framers so I’m afraid I can’t show you any that are framed. 

TS: Ok just tell me when you had enough…. actually framing was something I was going to ask you about. Do you choose to get involved in that? Or do you have someone that chooses for you ??

DF: I used to frame the canvases with simple hockey stick as it’s very cheap but these days since I’ve become more successful, I take them to a framers near Chelmsford and spend quite a lot of time selecting the right moulding for each piece. 

DF: (Glancing around at paintings scattered around the room) Here’s some paintings I started in France - there’s another 6 or 7 months to go before they’re finished , this is just what I call the first coat, like when you decorate a house. These are in the very early stages.

TS: That's interesting, so it’s more layers to make the colours deeper. I’m not sure I would’ve known , if you’d have said that’s finished I would’ve thought it was. So you're just going to add more layers to make the colour richer

DF: That one’s nearing completion but I haven’t got the magic in it yet! ……That one’s a house across the road…….. That’s a garage, that's what I’m going to work on today……. This one’s got to be warmed up a bit and darkened..… This one’s got to be brightened so it pings out

DF: This one is in a bit of a mess at the moment (pointing at a large canvas of an open green space with a fairground in) .. I’ve been working on that for 15 months

TS: Do you mind me asking what you don't think is working in it?

DF: It’s just not hanging together properly

TS: Do you ever get to the point think oh scrap it I can’t be bothered if it’s not working or do you always try and retrieve it

DF: No, I'll always try and retrieve it….. Now this one down there I think there’s too much going on

TS: Ah there’s a runner in there and a dog, 

TS: Would it have more mystery if they were taken out??

DF : Yes I think so !

TS: Oh i like the runner, it still has a Hopper kind of mystery with them in it

DF: This is my biggest failure over here literally!  … (unpacking a large canvas on the floor) I started that when I got my dog Charlie six years ago; I last worked on it about a year ago.  I think it’s just too big for me, I think everyone has a scale

TS: The location looks familiar, where is it?  The bin man is really good!

DF: It’s in Barking, I think the foreground is dead. The road just isn’t working yet. I won’t give up on it but I don’t think I will attempt another painting that large. 

TS: But will you try and retrieve it? So potentially it may still work out in the end, do you have anyone who has technical input or feedback to what you do for feedback? 

DF: Steve, my husband is a trained artist and former art lecturer, I value his opinions and suggestions a great deal however I’ve always worked as ‘the cat who walked by himself or rather herself’ so I don’t require much in the way of feedback whilst working. However without Steve my life would feel quite isolated. 

TS: I’ve spoken to some artists who don’t care much about other’s opinions. If they're happy with it, that's enough.

DF: I couldn’t have lived the life I’ve led if I'd with someone who didn’t understand the fact - 

A - no children and B - long periods when I’m not interested in what they’ve got to say!

TS: Do you have long periods where you don’t paint ever? Do you have breaks ? 

DF: I stopped for 9 years between 2004 - 2013. I had been teaching art for 10 years already to SEN students part-time at Tower Hamlets College in Poplar. I enjoyed the company of other lecturers  and seemed to be able to motivate the students. Painting- wise there was little interest in exhibiting my work so  when I was offered a full-time position I saw it as a new opportunity and packed away my studio with little regret.  I’m all or nothing with the painting so I just stopped and I thought I’d never paint again.  I saw my job as that of supporting the lecturers, looking after their welfare so that they in turn could support the students to perform to the best of their ability.  Eventually I was disciplined at work for not supporting part of the senior management and had to leave, after that I returned to painting. I would’ve stayed longer.

TS: Those styles like abstraction and surrealism that you mentioned that were more in favor of what you were doing, are you a fan ? As a viewer?

DF: A painting is just an accumulation of marks, shapes and colours on the canvas which can be abstract or figurative. I think there’s good art and bad art in both. My first husband Gerald Marks was an artist, he started out as figurative and became an  abstract painter in that subject was the marks that the paint made on the canvas. 

 ‘A painting is just an accumulation of marks, shapes and colours on the canvas which can be abstract or figurative. I think there’s good art and bad art in both’.

Painting in France and East London 

TS: You spend quite a lot of time In France, when you’re there do you work mostly? What’s it like working there as opposed to here?

DF: I’ve only got a tiny studio, but the light is better than here, it’s northern light .

TS: Stronger?

DF: It’s what all artists want, it’s constant, no sun. This studio here faces west, northwest.

TS: So do you feel like with the east London paintings that you’re almost kind of done with them because you’ve done so many ??

DF: Hmm not an easy question, I’m becoming more drawn to making paintings that don’t refer to a specific location. I think I’m getting interested in this kind of painting, on the flats (Wanstead Flats ) which could be anywhere in the country…….. (pointing at a painting of a fairground in the middle of a green space, Wanstead )

TS: What happens for example with this fairground image if you didn’t like it? Could you remove it or would you have to go over it?

DF: I’d paint over it if it was dry or if it was still wet I could wipe it away with turps.

TS: It doesn’t affect the other layers?

DF: No not once it’s dry, I really like oil paint because you can do anything you want with it, unlike watercolour or pastel for example. You asked earlier about what brands I used ??

TS: My brother gave me Van Gogh’s diaries. I really like when he talks about actually sourcing the materials and the realities of that, I guess it’s pretty expensive?

DF: (Picking up various tubes of paint) That’s £11, that’s £14, I use a lot of that; that’s  £20 but it’ll probably last me the rest of my life as I don’t use a lot of red cadmium 

Painting in France & East London

TS: Something else I really like about your pieces which wasn’t that obvious to me at first is the starting place where you’re standing from, the angle of the viewer. For example this piece, it looks a bit off somehow, around the back of the petrol station,  like a spot or location where you might not normally be

DF: I think Charlie (the dog)  led me there, he was sniffing something out 

TS: Are you doing more paintings in France now ? As opposed to in East London ??

DF: I will probably continue to paint various aspects of East London even when I am surrounded by cows in Normandy! I am realistic in so far as my market and the interest and demand for my work lies in London 

TS: And is the process slightly different now that you’re more well known and you know when you finish a piece it’s probably going to sell? How does it work? Are you then sending it to a gallery ?

DF: I have a very loose arrangement with Townhouse which works well for both parties. I've never wanted to be contracted to a gallery like some artists I know, because they are usually under constant pressure to produce a specific number of works almost to order. 

TS: Do you have different styles amongst your own style ?? I mean sometimes more realistic or sometimes softer?

DF: Hmm, well it is becoming softer, I mean I can’t paint clouds like bricks can I ! I seem to be painting more grass and trees these days. 

TS: Did you study drawing ??

DF: Twice but I never listened to the tutors.

TS: So you didn’t get any technique or any other habits from them ?

DF: Not really! I think when I was young my art teacher at school, Mr Hanford, was the best teacher I ever had but I don’t think I’ve learned much since. Or maybe I just didn’t want to listen ..

TS: And you’ve not absorbed any influence from any peers or groups you’ve been part of ? I think I thought you were because I saw your work in a show to do with the east London group.

DF: I don’t mind showing alongside groups but I’ve never wanted to be part of one. The title of the exhibition you are referring to was’In the Footsteps of the East London Group’ which is fine. I have never been affiliated with any women’s art groups as I consider myself simply to be an artist, my gender is irrelevant in relation to the concerns I have as a painter.

When I was younger and used to drink a lot I got into some quite heated arguments about how I view the position of the female artist in society. I don’t drink anymore, I can’t since my illness and I prefer to avoid confrontation these days. (Fletcher was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in 2008, a condition her father died from.) Now I come across as mild ! And I don’t drink , well a little, all my wine is now intravenous , I have to have it injected 

Ts:  Maybe it's not got the same pleasure does it ?

Df: Oh yes ! But you have to be careful 

TS: Did the illness affect your painting?

DF:  At the point I became ill, I was not painting but working full-time at college. I was on sick leave for a year and returned for another five years before I felt obliged to leave for unrelated reasons. When I went back to painting, I don’t believe that my condition had any effect other than to make me very aware that life is short and to try to make the most of the time I have left. 

‘When  I was younger and used to drink a lot I got into some quite heated arguments about how I view the position of the female artist in society. I don’t drink anymore, I can’t since my illness and I prefer to avoid confrontation these days’.

Commercial Road 

TS: I just noticed this one, that’s an amazing painting, what’s it called ?

DF: ‘Whit Sunday, Commercial Road’. 

TS: I really like the shadow and the detail, do you ever get contacted by the business owners about your paintings because their premises were in it ?

DF: Well in my last show I had a painting of a barbers’ shop and sold it. A few months later I received a message on Instagram from the owners of the shop saying ‘We need the facade painting. Would you take on this job?’ ! 

TS: Oh you mean paint the outside?? and turn up with your rollers ! Haha

Ok thank you, I think we should stop, I’ve taken up a lot of your time, thank you. 

DF: Well it’s been one of the most pleasant interviews I’ve ever had!

“We need the facade painting… would you take on this job!”

doreenfletcherartist.com

The gentle author - early drawings feature