Dr Eris Fleming
Eris Fleming was born at Inverell in 1943, the fifth son in a family of nine boys. He is of Irish-French extraction. His early years were spent on a farm outside Delungra in north western New South Wales. In this environment, rabbiting, horses, picking up dead wool, skinning snakes and shanghais were serious ways to get through the day. He attended a one teacher school at Boonda-near Myall Creek where marbles during school hours and horse racing after school, were major preoccupations and a source of serious disputations. He attended Delungra public school for several years-where he learnt that he couldn't fight-but could add up and takeaway and spell a little. Departing the large, sometimes tumultuous family environment, he attended boarding school in Sydney before inadvertently wandering down the wrong track-studying medicine at Sydney University-graduating in 1966.
From his early kindergarten/plasticine/crayon days, Eris had a serious fascination with painting and drawing. Materials were almost unprocurable at that time in the bush."Art" at that time was considered a very poor career decision indeed. For a young man from his background art was considered by all authoritive figures to be a "no go" area. Notwithstanding, Eris continued to paint, despite the bold assertion that "artists are as poor as church mice." After graduation, he worked as a GP in both large and small country towns of N.S.W. and Victoria. He worked briefly for the N.S.W. Health Department before resigning in order to pursue more fully, the alleged lifestyle of a "church mouse."
Eris held his first major one-man exhibition in Brisbane in 1972. Since then he has enjoyed successful one-man and mixed exhibitions in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra and other major centers in Australia.
