ETHNO FRACTALISM
My name is Ronald Fields. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and as child, I had a keen interest in art.
At age 16, on the weekends, I began to use public transportation to take trips to the Cleveland Museum of Art. I loved seeing the great works of art which were so inspiring! My professional art career began in 1977, as I had enrolled in art courses at the Philadelphia College of Art in Philadelphia, PA.
In 1981 I moved to Winter Haven, Florida and enrolled in additional art courses at Polk Community College. In 2006, I was confident enough to begin exhibiting in group shows on the streets of downtown Lakeland, Florida along with other artists. I also participated in solo and group shows in many cities in central Florida.
January 2013 was a pivotal year for me as it was the last year that I exhibited my acrylic paintings. The paintings hung in the administration building of the City of Lakeland Transit Authority for 60 days. After that exhibit, I was determined to learn Photoshop and Fractal software— as painting no longer offered a satisfactory medium for what I wanted to express. The sophistication and complexity of these creative software programs appealed to me. They created an irritable curiosity that I had to explore!
As an African American, I desired to create a new non-representational art that generates an emotional connection to African Americans equal to the connection held for representational art. As work progressed, I discovered a method for creating African inspired patterns. Continued efforts taught me that by incorporating the African inspired patterns with fractal designs, I could create a sophisticated Africanized design like the native Africans. So, from 2013 to 2017, I taught myself enough about these software programs to evolve into a style that I can truly call my own.
I named the style...ETHNO FRACTALISM.