Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

"Petra" is the legendary rose-red city of the Nabataean people and a monotype print collage I just completed to show in the VIVA 2023 Holiday Art Studio Tour.  The ancient city of Petra, is dramatically concealed behind a wall of mountains, pierced only by the Siq Canyon of Jordan. Built in the 3rd century BC by Nabataeans, who carved beautiful palaces, temples, tombs, storerooms and stables from the soft, red, sandstone cliffs.  Petra is one of my "Magic Carpet Ride" cut monotype paper series, exhibiting in VIVA’s 2023 Holiday Studio Tour   Dec. 2-3 & 9-10 . Check out my studio, #2 on the VIVA Tour Map , and Petra, this Vashon Holiday Art Studio Tour!  

Babylon, is one of my "Magic Carpet Ride" collage monotypes exhibiting in VIVA's 2023 Holiday Studio Tour, the first two weekends in December.  I'm #2 on the tour map.  This work is named for the ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river, in southern Mesopotamia, within contemporary Iraq and is inspired by these words describing a people dispossessed of their homes and made subject to an invading power, from the King James Bible-  By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.  We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.  For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.  

Nineveh , Monotype collage with 24k gold, 19 1/2" x 28 1/2" on Somerset Velvet Paper   Danny Kopsak and I will show in "Cut and Paste" at Vashon Center for the Arts Gallery, Aug 11-27, 2023. Opening Aug 11, 5-8pm. The title of our show "Cut and Paste" describes a critical part of the process we each undertake to create compositions cut from paper. My monotype print collage, Nineveh, is one of eight pattern compositions inspired by ancient cities of the Middle East, first printed, then cut and collaged, in a series I call- Magic Carpet Ride! Nineveh the ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, was located on the outskirts of Mosul in modern-day northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Check it all out this month at Vashon Center for the Arts during the Summer Arts Festival!

"Damascus" is a monotype print collage from my Magic Carpet Ride series for “Cut and Paste” showing with paper cut artist Danny Kopsak’s new work at Vashon Center Gallery. Opening Aug 11, 5-8, exhibiting through Aug 27, in VCA's Summer Arts Festival 2023. “Whoever would sit upon this carpet and will it to be taken up and set down upon another site, shall, in the twinkling of an eye, be borne thither, whether that place be near at hand, or distant many a day's journey and difficult to reach.” It is said that Solomon’s magic carpet was made with a warp of green silk and weft of golden thread. It was sixty miles long and sixty miles wide. When he sat upon the carpet he was caught up by the wind and flew so quickly that he could breakfast in Damascus and dine in Media.

  Helios, Oil on Canvas over panel, 16 x 16 in. I'm framing "Helios" today, the last of my work to be framed in preparation for the 2023 Spring VIVA Art Studio Tour, May 6-7 & 13-14, Sats & Suns, 10am-5pm.  I am lucky #13 on the tour map this year! I was delighted to have one of my sunflower paintings selected for this years brochure and poster.  Check it out here, VIVA Art Tour , along with all the other wonderful studios and galleries on the Vashon Island Visual Artists (VIVA) studio tour!

  My monotype print,“The Pearl Divers", is currently on exhibit at JGO Gallery, on Bainbridge Island. My mother in-law was an opera fan. Not long after she moved to the Northwest, Seattle Opera performed The Pearl Fishers, ( Les Pecheurs de Perles),  by Bizet and she declared "You will love it" and "We must attended this performance!"  At the time I was living through hellish back pain.  Perhaps the pain is what made it memorable (I stood in the back of McCall Hall for most of the performance),  but its' beautiful friendship aria, sung by the central characters Zurga and Nadir, have been with me ever since.  Thank you Doris for insisting on the experience!

  "The Queen in Winter" Monotype print with 24k gold over panel, 10" x 10".  Check her out on the 2023 VIVA Art Studio Tour, the first two weekends in May. Link  @vivartists.com Each winter, the beehive clusters, the queen at warmest, center, with the core worker bees shaking, shivering around her to maintaining a survivable heat. The fate of the hive depends on how sufficiently the hive population has prepared for winter.

My Monotype Print, “Queen Bee”, 24k gold, 10" x 10 ", is inspired by the real and historical importance of bees in myth and as pollinators. Check her out, studio  #13 , on the VIVA 2023 Spring Art Studio Tour, May 6-7 & 13-14. The self guided tour hosts 37 art studios and galleries! Visit all the studios the first two weekends in May. Bees as pollinators and the honey they produce are central to mankind's wellbeing, our creation myths, cosmologies and the sacred places of many ancient cultures.  Greek, African, Australian, South American and Hindu-Indian creation stories recognize and highlight the bee as a revered animal and sacred symbol.  Bees evolved soon after the first flowers appeared in the Cretaceous Period, an estimated 130 million years ago!  

Twin Djinn, 10 x 10 in. monotype over wood panel, (currently at Swiftwater Gallery ) is inspired by the Arabic myths of the Qareen, meaning “constant companion” or spiritual double, who is either part of you or a complementary being in another dimension. Sometimes defined as Djinn, the Qareen have parallels in Egyptian mythology, as ka, a tangible "spirit double" and in contemporary stories of the doppelgänger.

  "Jacob Dreams of Angels" is my monotype print, (1/1), with silver metal leaf, currently on exhibit at  Vashon Center for the Arts Gallery, Jan 6-29, 2023 in The Notable Collection .   The Torah and the Bible tell of Jacob’s vivid dream about a stairway or ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending. It is in this dream that the God of his grandfather Abraham and father Isaac, appears to Jacob and promises the land that he sleeps upon to his descendants and that through Jacob and his descendants that all the families of the earth shall find blessing. What a profound dream and the ladder a powerful symbol of connection between the physical and an unknown where dreams are sourced or realized.