Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

    My spin on Aesop's fable of the Fox & Hare.  Monotype Print, (1/1) with 24k gold leaf.   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.” The fable illustrates- The gullible and uninformed often pay a high price for recklessly indulging their curiosity.

  This Sacred Circle "La Venta" is from my series about sacred sites and sacred geographies.  It's a Ltd. Edition, Original Digital Print, (1/12).  La Venta was an Olmec civic and ceremonial center located in the present day state of Tabasco Mexico.  The Olmec civilization is considered a mother culture of Mesoamerica and flourished between 1600 and 350 BCE.  The La Venta site contains an elaborate series of buried offerings and tombs, as well as monumental sculptures.  One of these 9' tall sculptural heads is the inspiration for my print "La Venta".  

Mauna Kea, Sacred Circle, is inspired by the most prominent geographic feature of the island of Hawai’i, the mountain volcano Mauna Kea and by the stick maps that Polynesian and Micronesian sailers once made and used to chart their open water travel. In Hawaiian traditions of creation, the Earth Mother, Papahānaumoku, and the Sky Father, Wākea, created the Islands, with Hawai‘i Island being the first and the mountain, the piko (navel or center of a beginning or ending), of their creation.   On the mountains sides are many shrines to the pantheon of Hawaiian gods and (it has been suggested) to astronomical phenomena.  The top of Mauna Kea was historically considered kapu and only accessible to priests and the highest chiefs but, beginning in the late 1960s, a number of large telescope observatories have been built at the 13,796 ft. summit where the air is cold, dry and visibility of the heavens is near perfect. In 2019 the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, was stoped ...

Above is- Sacred Circle "Bosumtwi" from my series about sacred sites, sacred geographies.  It is a Ltd. Edition, Original Digital Print, (1/12). Bosumtwi is a crater lake in Ghana created when a meteor struck Earth an estimated 1.07 million years ago. The Ashanti believe souls of the dead come here to bid farewell to the Goddess Asase Ya, or Mother Earth and wife of Nyame the Sky deity. You can check out my print "Bosumtwi" in person by connecting to the VIVA "Art by Appointment" program. Guides are available on island and here is a Link to schedule an appointment to visit my studio and the 70 Vashon Artists participating in this patron to artist initiative.

I've been hand printing "Dream Catchers" a lino-cut from my Leo and Lang story.  I made this low tech registration block from a 3/4" melamine panel that Suzanne Moore, #scarletpaints33, contributed to make this simple print process possible.  Thanks Suzanne! Leo and Lang are the imaginary same sex characters, as marionettes, who live their love and lives in this ongoing series.  "Dream Catchers" is hand printed with Caligo Ink on Somerset Satin Paper.  Image size, 8.5 in. x 6.75 in.

The subject is Djinn. This photo was taken at QMP, Quartermaster Press, while still on the press.  Although printed last week the red ink was still wet when I picked it up yesterday.  I think one more layer of black line, some gold leaf and... it will be finished!  But first it must... dry! A Djinn (genii, ginn, jann, jinn, shayatin, shaytan) is in Arabic mythology, a spirit, not a demon, not quite an angel either, but something like the Greek Daimones.  Djinn can be either good or evil.  They possess supernatural powers and in lore can be conjured to perform various tasks and services by humankind. Most of us are familiar with Djinn as the wish-granting “Genie” in the Arabic folktale of Aladdin's Lamp and The Book of A Thousand and One Nights, but there are many stories of Djinn.  This is the first of my series about them.

I've been printing my Leo and Lang etching , "Twin Sons, Different Mothers" at Quartermaster Press Studio. I'm so delighted by the polymer plate made by Intaglio Editions from my drawing. The prints from this plate are a small edition in dark gray and a second small edition in carbon black, both on Hahnemühle Copperplate paper. My story of Leo and Lang begins, somewhere in the Netherlands, high atop a chimney. It's a defining moment in a series of images that explore same sex relationship and an imagined history.