Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

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 the sweetest of

  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.

  My Monotype Print, (1/1) “Temple of the Winds” has its inspiration in the myths of the Anemia, the four winds and their children associated with Earth's cycle of seasons and once worshiped as; Boreas the North-Wind, Zephyrus the West-Wind, Notus the South-Wind, and Eurus the East-wind.  Long before I learned about the Anemia, I loved the author Thornton W. Burgess's personification of wind and wild creatures in The Wishing-Stone Stories and in his other children's books.  So that is perhaps the origin of this work? "Tommy couldn't see anything lovely in the beautiful, broad, Green Meadows with the shadows of the clouds chasing one another across them.  He couldn't hear the music of the birds and the bees.  He couldn't even hear the Merry Little Breezes whispering secrets as they danced around him."  Merry Little Breezes was a repeated, elemental phrase, in Burgess's books dedicated to nature, "Love, mercy and protection for our little frien

  “I am the Master of my Fate, I am the Captain of my Soul”   My monotype print with aluminium leaf is exhibiting with other prints created by 7 of Quartermaster Press Studio’s artists and with 4 Vashon potters now through the end of March at Vashon Center for the Arts Gift Gallery. Invictus, Latin for invincible and the name of William Ernest Henley's inspirational poem has long been a favorite subject of mine. I keep coming back to it. We may all be in this life together but as the decision maker of our lifetimes, we are each our sole authority. “I am the master of my fate...I am the captain of my soul”

I'm at work carving my Paper Moon Linoleum block of Love Puppets- Leo and Lang . Once upon a time, before cameras were common and digital imagery had replaced film, everyone’s local fair or carnival featured set photography where a photo portrait might be taken to document the day, a friendship or love. Paper moons were a standard set. The song Paper Moon was written in 1932 and had already been recorded by many artists when in 1973 Peter Bogdanovich gave it new life by using it as background music and naming his movie, starring Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal and Madeline Kahn, Paper Moon.   The film has since become a classic and words to the song indelible.      “It is only a paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea      But it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me...” Given the time and place I’ve imagined my characters Leo and Lang born to, they must have sat in a paper moon and acknowledged their own true love.        “It's a Barnum and Bailey world, Just as phon