Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

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.