Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

The 2022 Notable Show at Vashon Center for the Arts Gallery opens Jan. 7. I've been working on angel myth as subject in paintings and monotype prints since early 2021. It's so satisfying to see work finally coming together. Michael, Angel of Strength, shown here, is the last of four oil paintings on canvas over panel for the exhibit.  My inspiration for these paintings and prints are Italian   Renaissance   artist   Fra Angelico’s “Technicolor” angel winged paintings of Gabriel, the Angel of the Annunciation and my sincere curiosity about the human need for answers and explanations .    Our love of the evolving narrative always intrigues me !

Missing Holiday Art Studio Tour?   You can shop Brian Fisher Art Studio by scheduling a visit! VIVA, Vashon Island Visual Artists, the organization responsible for Art Tour, created Art by Appointment so that you can safely connect with (more than 70) participating island artists.  So, don't be shy, make your appointment today!  Contact: Brian@BrianFisherArt.com  Link here, Art by Appointment , for all participating artists and their contact information.  All COVID protocols observed for mutual safety.

Delighted to show with these Fine Art Print Artists! Quartermaster Press and invited guests at the Hardware Store Restaurant on Vashon Island Nov 5-30, 2021.

The Vashon Heritage Museum has hosted the award winning exhibit "In and Out, Being LGBTQ on Vashon Island" since June of 2019.  Originally slated to run until March of 2020 it's been on exhibit until this week, September 6, 2021.   I'm honored to have been asked to create five window panels for the exhibit and be a part of the creative process envisioned by Deb Phillimore, Ellen Kritzman. Stephen Silha, Jesica De Wire, Bruce Haulman and the inspired advisory board they assembled. We all identify with the music of our time.  I asked friends to share the music they identified as significant in their lives, relationships and coming out story.  Their music inspired the monotype/collagraph prints with cut and printed wood sculpture that became the Let's All Dance window panels for the exhibit.  The panels were each 68 x 36 in. and titled (in the order above) Small Town Boy, The Band Played On, Let's All Dance, Anthem and Break Free. Here's a wonderful ...

  Mystras, an oil on canvas painting is my contribution to the 2021 Vashon Center for the Arts Gala Art Auction  at Vashon Center for the Arts Gallery. The auction begins First Friday, September 3, with hundreds of works generously donated by island artists, as well as dozens of unique one-of-a-kind experiences. Bidding will take place for three weeks from September 3 until September 24 and will close at the start of the Gala Livestream event at 7PM on September 24. All items will be featured online and in the VCA gallery. If you'd like to see the art in person, gallery hours are Wed thru Sun from 12-5PM. Mystras is named for the archaeological site and Byzantine city in the Peloponnese of modern Greece, where ruins of churches and palaces, houses, and bridges, were built on a steep mountain slope. Its ruins tell the story of a beautiful city that once flourished as the provincial capital of the Byzantine Despotate of Morea. Founded in 1248 by William II of Villehardouin, Fran...

My spin on Aesop's fable,  The Fox & Hare, (m onotype print, with 24k gold leaf), is one of my many fable based prints on exhibit in "On Being Human" at Roby King Gallery, 176 Winslow Way E. Bainbridge Island WA, September 3-26. So the story goes-   One warm afternoon Fox napped and woke on a sun soaked slope to find Hare watching her intently. “Why do you stare little friend?” Fox asked. "Are you really as cunning, as smart, as others say?” Hare asked.  Fox rolled on her back and thought for awhile before replying, “Perhaps I could show you just how cunning I am little friend? You are cordially invited for early dinner, where we shall continue this conversation. Come as you are, come now if you like?” So Hare, filled with curiosity, followed Fox home. Fox though, had nothing at home to eat except? Now Hare exclaimed, “I have learned too late that your cunning is not about intelligence but unjust trickery that would sacrifice the innocent to fill you own belly.” ...

My Monotype Print, A Decampment of Djinn will be in the Printmakers' Hand V Exhibit at Northwind Art Best Gallery in Port Townsend, WA September 2 - October 31.  Sponsored by Corvidae Press print collective of Port Townsend.  Artist, Marit Berg is the 2021 juror for this much-loved biennial show.  Here's a YouTube link to this wonderful exhibit.  

  Friends or Foes, my monotype print (1/1) with 24K gold, will exhibit in ”On Being Human”,  at   Roby King Gallery on Bainbridge Island, Sept. 3-26, 2021.   Although several of my prints in the "On Being Human" exhibit are my take on teaching fables attributed to Aesop, this monotype is more personal.  It's about those relationships that shape us because they are... challenging.  It also pays homage to truth as a bottom line we can agree or should agree to. Sometimes that challenging relationship is a close one and your friend is a friend because they tell the truth out of love for you.  Things you need to hear can still be difficult to hear, even from a friend!    Sometimes the relationship is less defined but you respect the other person's comments or actions because they act from integrity or... maybe they are relatives and believe wholeheartedly in what they share?  It would often seem that the mor...

Aletheia and the Bedtime Story, my monotype print (1/1), will exhibit in ”On Being Human”,  At Roby King Gallery on Bainbridge Island, Sept. 3-26, 2021.  Link here to the gallery and more of my work on display at Roby King. Myths and Fables are often read and told as entertainment, but as we know, the truth is in the telling and the power of truth, we hope, wins out.   My print is a bit of a visual pun on the name Aletheia, who was the Greek Goddess of truth, truth revealed, the naked truth… she is more familiar in Latin as Veritas.   Aesop, who’s teaching stories inspired my latest “fable” print series, tells two fables about the Goddess of Truth, Aletheia. In one, a man traveling in the wild discovers Aletheia living alone, far from civilization and asks her why she dwells in the wilderness.   She replies, “ Among the people of old, only a few told and repeated lies, but now those who lie exist throughout all of human society! ”   From this fable we learn...

Sting Like a Bee, monotype print with 24K gold, for the “On Being Human” exhibit at Roby King Gallery, September 3-26, 2021  Bees have existed for perhaps 130 million years. An estimated 65 million years ago some of them survived the meteor that struck earth, caused global temperatures to drop and brought the extinction of larger mammals. Some of those bees had already evolved a social lifestyle, like Apis mellifera Linnaeus, the western Honeybee. Along with hive mentality they also evolved a way to defend themselves, a sting. We, the descendants of smaller mammals who also survived destruction, are dependent for sustenance on pollinating bees.  My monotype print “Sting Like a Bee” depicts one of Aesop’s teaching fables that present flora and fauna as characters with human fallibilities. The Queen of the Bees could bear it no longer. Humans were forever plundering her hives of honey, so she decided to petition Zeus for justice and a means of defense. She gathered t...

  Cloud Memory, Brian Fisher, monotype print The VIVA Membership Show at Vashon Center for the Arts Gallery was lots of fun and a big success.  My monotype, Cloud Memory, was one of 115 Vashon Island Artist's works that were on display June 4-28.  Here is a link to the fly through of everything on exhibit in June at VCA in case you missed it-  2021 VIVA  EXHIBIT and a photo of the show shortly before opening.  Many thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make this wonderful exhibit a success!

  “Mind Walk”   is one of my monotype prints in the Black / White Show at Roby King Gallery, 176 Winslow Way E. Bainbridge Island, WA, May 7-30, 2021. Before Google or the printed page a trained memory was vitally important and the only way to retain and share knowledge.   Across cultures, but particularly in Greece and later Rome, humans created elaborate memory systems known as Mnemonics or memory devices named for the Greek Goddess of memory, Mnemosyne.   Based on strategies of association of "places" and "images" with the desired subject to be remembered, these techniques aided in the retention of information and its retrieval.    

  My monotype "Carnival of the Animals" imagines a party of exotic beasts on parade.   Partly inspired by Camille Saint-Saëns suite of 14 movements by the same name and the fact that all animals, plants, and fungi share an ancestor that lived about 1.6 billion years ago. Every lineage that descended from that progenitor retains parts of its original genome.   We are all in this parade!  We are the Carnival of Animals!   Currently for sale at Vashon Center for the Arts Gallery in the Notable Collection.

  My Monotype Print, (1/1) “Temple of the Winds” has its inspiration in the myths of the Anemia, the four winds and their children associated with Earth's cycle of seasons and once worshiped as; Boreas the North-Wind, Zephyrus the West-Wind, Notus the South-Wind, and Eurus the East-wind.  Long before I learned about the Anemia, I loved the author Thornton W. Burgess's personification of wind and wild creatures in The Wishing-Stone Stories and in his other children's books.  So that is perhaps the origin of this work? "Tommy couldn't see anything lovely in the beautiful, broad, Green Meadows with the shadows of the clouds chasing one another across them.  He couldn't hear the music of the birds and the bees.  He couldn't even hear the Merry Little Breezes whispering secrets as they danced around him."  Merry Little Breezes was a repeated, elemental phrase, in Burgess's books dedicated to nature, "Love, mercy and protection for our little frien...

  “I am the Master of my Fate, I am the Captain of my Soul”   My monotype print with aluminium leaf is exhibiting with other prints created by 7 of Quartermaster Press Studio’s artists and with 4 Vashon potters now through the end of March at Vashon Center for the Arts Gift Gallery. Invictus, Latin for invincible and the name of William Ernest Henley's inspirational poem has long been a favorite subject of mine. I keep coming back to it. We may all be in this life together but as the decision maker of our lifetimes, we are each our sole authority. “I am the master of my fate...I am the captain of my soul”

I'm at work carving my Paper Moon Linoleum block of Love Puppets- Leo and Lang . Once upon a time, before cameras were common and digital imagery had replaced film, everyone’s local fair or carnival featured set photography where a photo portrait might be taken to document the day, a friendship or love. Paper moons were a standard set. The song Paper Moon was written in 1932 and had already been recorded by many artists when in 1973 Peter Bogdanovich gave it new life by using it as background music and naming his movie, starring Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal and Madeline Kahn, Paper Moon.   The film has since become a classic and words to the song indelible.      “It is only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea      But it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me...” Given the time and place I’ve imagined my characters Leo and Lang born to, they must have sat in a paper moon and acknowledged their own true love.       ...

Prayer, from the Notables exhibit, came down earlier this week but is available on line at Vashon Center for the Arts Online Gallery.  You can see the show in a Virtual Exhibit , walk through, if you didn't have the chance to see it in January. Prayer 19 x 37 in. Monotype Print (1/1) and Painted wood base-relief Prayer depicts those moments proceeding battle as imagined from within the Trojan Horse.   These concealed warriors are the last hope of the Greek coalition to capture the city of Troy.   They may win the fight and city, or they could all die.   Either way the war that had already lasted ten years will end.   The portion that is print in “Prayer” evokes personal reflection before battle.   The bas-relief symbols of “Prayer” tell part of the story that proceeds this moment and conclusion of the Trojan War.

  Working on base-reliefs last August, photographed by artist Terry Donnelly. I was able to complete much of the print/bas-reliefs "Prayer" and "Prepare", (now on exhibit at Vashon Center for the Arts and also online at VCA), in my outside studio this summer. Terry came by to capture art in process on several occasions. I had a great time talking while working and getting to know Terry better!  I am so honored to be a part of his "People at Work" photography series!

Delighted to be  part of the Notable Collection at Vashon Center for the Arts that runs through Jan 31, 2021 and includes the work of Vashon artists Victoria Adams, Morgan Brig, Brian Fisher, Britt Freda, Pam Ingalls, Kirsten Reitz-Green, and Erin Schulz. Check out the Online Gallery. Take a Virtual Tour.