Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

  "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!  

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 that of the