Meet Fred Fleisher

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Fred Fleisher. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Fred below.

Hi Fred, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

I would say my work ethic comes from a number of sources. First would be prior experiences in life. I am a veteran and my military experience continues to play a role in how I go about completing my goals. Certainly my experiences while being a student were important. Professors played key roles in inculcating how to prioritize completing work. Finally, without question, would be the voices of those who share key insight into following a professional path. Author Steven Pressfield always comes to mind. The notion of learning how to recognize resistance and push through that to keep working.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I started on my path of being an artist after an enlistment in the US Army. I joined the army right out of high school and I did not know that I could consider a life as an artist. Along the way in that short tiime frame and through a variety of experiences, I made a decision to go to school to study art. I studied art and art education as well.
As I developed my work it consistently became a combination of media usage across disciplines. Although I do focus on painting and sculpture, I have continued this cross media usage throughout my studio practice. The focus of my work will center on aspects of my experiences as an American, along with quirky figures and forms that spiral out into a unique reading. A short statement of my work is as follows: My work has the feeling of a surreal American road trip—part Terrence Malick film, part pro wrestling match with Walt Whitman in the seats. . soaked in gasoline and a new age gospel. It rides the line between existential overtones and unfailing hope, all unfolding in a cosmic dreamscape.
I have had a number of exhibitions in the US and internationally. I have a solo exhibition May 2025 with International Fine Arts Consortium at The Yard on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, as well as other exhibitions and residencies lined up.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The number one thing for me has always been absorption in whatever it is one wants to focus on. Is this something that you really want to do? Then dive into it. See if being fully involved is something that makes you tick. If it does, then do all you can to learn about it and be involved with it. I teach at a university and this is something I tell students.
After that it is vitally important to stay open to what feeds into that life focus. For example art is the important thing. But art is something that is the telling of what is experienced in life – whatever that might be.
Finally, I know that work doesn’t only happen when inspired to do it. Inspiration most often comes when one is engaged in the work. It continues to roll along.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

There are so many good books with authors who shared knowledge they have gleaned over time. I will say that Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art” played a vital role in how I consider approaching my work and my life with that work. Three areas in that book are: Resistance – how to see it and overcoming it; Turning Pro – thinking as a professional and knowing one has to show up to make that work happen; and the notion of higher realms – the forces and things that assist us (however we might believe) in accomplishing the work we need to make.

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