Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

I have completed another Monotype whose imagery draws on the bull, the Goddess and Cretan ritual for inspiration.  It is called The Bull, the Bee and the Goddess .  It will be exhibited at the Heron’s Nest during Vashon Island’s Holiday Studio Tour (December 5, 6 & 12,13) and is one of several paintings and Monotypes I will be exhibiting at The Heron's Nest throughout the month of December. A few years ago two good friends walked the El Camino de Santiago in Spain. Later, while describing the experience of hiking through Galicia and encountering shrine after shrine to “Our Lady”, one commented that these alters were probably manifestations of the Goddess filtered through the Christian tradition.  Her observation struck a personal chord and inspired my own arm chair research and subsequent visual exploration. The Goddess or Mother Goddess is the oldest deity in the archaeological record. Her manifestations are legion. One of her earliest (neolithic) forms is th...

The Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Crab Feed, a much loved tradition (1969-1994), party and auction fundraiser,  rides again.  This 2009 gala promises to be spectacular!  In addition to beautiful glass. sculpture. painting and print art donated by local and regional artists there will be such exceptional items as a flight over Bainbridge in an historic airplane, Emu Topsoil Garden Compost (really!), a Sage fly rod, and tickets to the Elton John/Billy Joel concert.  The party starts a 6:00 PM, October 24 at Banbridge Arts and Crafts.  Purchase tickets at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts or by telephone at 206.842.3132.  The image above is my donation to the Art Auction, a Monotype print, titled The Garden of the Hesperides.

Today I am posting an image of and detail from The Bull from the Sea. It’s a Monotype I have just completed and will be displaying when I open my studio for Vashon Island’s Holiday Studio Tour, the first two weekends in December. Lately I have been reading about bulls and the richly various rolls they have played in human history. If you are familiar with the myth of the Minotaur you may remember to what the tittle refers. Archaeological discoveries of ceremonial objects and art from numerous Paleolithic, Neolithic, and particularly in Minoan and Mycenaean sites attest a long symbolic life giving connection of the bull, to seasonal waters, vegetative regeneration and the incarnate generative force of the Goddess. Dorothy Cameron in her book “Symbols of Birth and Death in the Neolithic Period” offers diagrammatic comparison that the likeness of the head and horns of the bull in Neolithic art may also be a symbolic depiction of the female reproductive organs. Cretan culture is ric...