Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

Fellow Artist and good friend Ilse Reimnitz and I just completed our summer Monotype Print Workshop.  Everyone who participated  brought real enthusiasm and creative energy to the weekend event. I thank each of them for jumping into the inky good time. The approaches to monotype print are many.  The basics our workshop emphasized were  reductive methods of creating compositions to print, printing with selected natural shapes, with cut paper stencils, and printing with textural found materials.   We also experimented with draw-through  techniques.  The combination of these print methods result in painterly textures and unique imagery.

The legends of Jason and the Argonauts are primal myths of Western culture.  The stories are older than those told by Homer though surviving texts were not written until centuries later. The oldest extant account, the third century B.C. Greek epic poem by Apollonius Rhodius, with additional material by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Flaccus, has informed the imagery and design for many of my "Heroes Journey" Monotype Prints.  Now, I am interpreting those mythic and seminal narratives as gates. Above is my garden entrance before installation. At left is the design for the first of three entrance gates to my home, garden and studio.  Two of those gates will illustrate the Quest for the Golden Fleece and the Heroes of the Argonautica.  A third gate will depict the Hero Theseus and his epic adventures in the Labyrinth. The gates will be cut from from 12 gage steel and mounted within 1 1/2" steel frames.  I always enjoy creating si

Mandala's debut at ArtXchange , Seattle's contemporary international art gallery, was extraordinary!  I am delighted to participate in this wonderful show and exhibit with such extraordinary artists.  Many thanks to Cora Edmonds, Gallery Director, Lauren Davis, Gallery Manager and friend Mugoux, Creative Manifestadora and the Arxchange team! The opening, during Seattle's First Thursday Gallery Walk, featured a performance by Butoh dancer Kaoru Okumura and company.  Vashon flautist, Larry Lawson accompanied their performance. The Exhibit runs July 3-August 9. I'm already looking forward to the First Thursday Artists reception on August 7, 5-8 pm.

Gnosis, Rust Monotype, 30x30 in. ArtXchange Gallery’s new exhibit, Mandala: Contemporary Interpretations of the Ancient Form (Opening July 3, 5-8pm, thru August 9, 2014) features nine artists (Nola Avienne, Sarah Barrick, Eric Carson, Brian Fisher, Carl Gombert, Terra Holcomb, Chris Moench, C. Andrew Rohrmann and Connie Sabo), whose work explores the structure or theme of Mandala, the Hindu and Buddhist representation of the Universe. Mandalas, commonly seen as circular forms or a square within a circle, are a microcosm of existence, a meditative tool, and a Jungian symbol representing the effort to reunify the self. Above is my Rust Monotype Gnosis, one of several related rust images I will be exhibiting. ArtXchange is located at 512 1st Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104. Hours are 11:30-5:30 Tuesday-Saturday.

It has been a pleasure to exhibit in Playing and Living Joyfully , May-June, an exhibit curated by Janice Randall at Seattle's Plymouth Church. My two Monotypes in the exhibit, "Dog Walkin Waltz" and "Divining Center" shared the wall behind the baptismal font of this beautiful church with work by artists Kristen Reitz Green, Carol Swchennesen, Penny Grist, Donna Botten and Pam Ingalls. It was a wonderful exhibit in an inspiring space.

Workshops are celebrations of discovery for those who take them and for those who teach them! Several weekends a year my good friend Ilse Reimnitz and I teach monotype and watercolor workshops. I always have fun meeting new artists  and renewing ties with the friends who have returned to take another workshop.  And for me the bonus is to be with and make art with Ilse. Certainly watercolor demands patience and concentration  but the method we like to teach also embraces the serendipitous.  By reacting to what happens in an initial pour of transparent nonstaining pigments compositions are imagined, established and developed in each newly painted (staining) layer. In the photo above Ilse demonstrates the process.  Making art is a strange amalgam of actively seeing, purposeful motion and a portion of don't forget to breath, deeply.  People who make art are filters and conduits at the same time.   I thank the participants of our workshop and Ilse for reminding me.  

I am excited and grateful to be showing with my friends Penny Grist and Liz Lewis in Finding Center, our personal explorations of center and circle.  The opening reception is April 4, 6-9 pm and the show will hang April 4-24, 2014 in the Vashon Allied Arts Gallery at 19704 Vashon Hwy on Vashon Island Washington. Within mythic story, center is generally a tribally circumscribed place, a point of connection between sky and earth, where cardinal directions meet.  Whether that center be Delphi or Delos, the Temple Mount or the Black Hills, it is the same symbolic center.  It might be called Omphalos or Axis Mundi, Bindu or Bethyle  but details and superficial observations aside it functions as the still point from which all objective reality is a manifestation.  Spiritually it is the point we search from and for which we search.  The rust prints and sculpture I will be showing are expressions of that search, images that are inspired by the "Heroes Journe