Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

  The Nature of Angels, monoprint, 6 3/8 x 25 3/4 in. I've been working prints and paintings about angel myth and story for an August 5-28 exhibit at Roby King Gallery on Bainbridge Island. This image is a collograph monoprint, with metal leaf, inspired by remarks made by Joseph Campbell on how religions and mythologies need to change with time in order to maintain their relevance in peoples’ lives. Addressing change, Campbell once said about the digital world and computers, "Have you ever looked inside one of those things? It's a whole hierarchy of angels on slats. And those little tubes-those are miracles."

"Angel Over Atwood", relief monotype print. (1/1). 24" x 36", is named for a small town on the prairie located at the intersection of US Highway 36 and Kansas 25 in Northwest Kansas and nestled in the Beaver Valley on Beaver Creek. This was Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho country before white European settlers replaced them. Under the Works Progress Administration Atwood built a lake and when I was born called itself- Atwood, City by the Lake.    After the American Civil War my Fathers’ family moved to this area and to other small towns and land around Atwood. They came at a time when life meant struggle and to simply endure could be thought of as success. They brought little with them other than the belief that they would persevere and an ability to laugh often. Above all they were practical, though some of them were quite religious and (according to my grandfather) superstitious. I am sure that some saw angels in the tall grass as the wind swept the plains or...

  This is my painting of Lailah, Angel of Conception, Angel of Night , oil on canvas over panel, 36 x 24 in. currently at Vashon Center for the Arts Gallery on Vashon Island WA. Angels are typically considered genderless, but Lailah is described as feminine in Midrash (commentary on Hebrew scriptures, attached to biblical text). In this tradition, she teaches the unborn spirt the Torah before birth and provides each a candle so that it can see its path in the world to come. In the moment that the spirt is born to this world, Lailah blows out the candle and strikes the child’s upper lip, causing the new babe to forget everything, but leaving the indention we all have above our upper lips. This is said to be the physical reminder of original knowledge and prompt to unlearn our way back to God. I was unfamiliar with this story until researching angel mythology, but it called to mind that experience we all have, at least while young, of knowing something rather than learning somet...