Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

“Taming Bucephalus” Oil on Canvas  with 24k gold, 20 x 20 in.  I nspired by Alexander of Macedon, Alexander the Great, this painting "Taming Bucephalus" is about his famous war horse.  There is much real, documented, history about Alexander and of course the larger than life lore that grew up after his death.  All of it has kept his story active, alive, 2,345 years after his death. My mother gave me the Mary Renault books about Alexander when I was young.  I recently reread the first book in Renault's Alexander trilogy, Fire From Heaven, first published in 1969.  Historical fiction can be informative and entertaining.  This story, his story, is powerful, and still relevant!  Delighted that Taming Bucephalus and it's companion painting, Hephaestion,  just sold.

Daniel Mendelsohn wrote, “The writers we absorb when we’re young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron. In time, the bonds fall away, but if you look very closely you can sometimes make out the pale white groove of a faded scar, or the telltale chalky red of old rust.”  He was describing how Mary Renault’s books and her correspondence with him had influenced his life.  He could also have been describing the physical scars of a survivor of lightening strike. I first read “Fire from Heaven,” and the “The Persian Boy” when I was 15 and Renault cast a literally spell over how I viewed my adolescent world.   In many ways the characters and places she described continue to influence how I filter circumstance and the art I create. The biblical interpretation of  “Fire from Heaven” is about sacrifice, (burnt offerings) and retribution.  When I created my rust Monotype “Fire from Heaven” shortly after Trump won enough Electoral votes to qualify him for Presidency I admit t