Brian Fisher Print, Paint and Sculpture Blog

  Helios, Oil on Canvas over panel, 16 x 16 in. I'm framing "Helios" today, the last of my work to be framed in preparation for the 2023 Spring VIVA Art Studio Tour, May 6-7 & 13-14, Sats & Suns, 10am-5pm.  I am lucky #13 on the tour map this year! I was delighted to have one of my sunflower paintings selected for this years brochure and poster.  Check it out here, VIVA Art Tour , along with all the other wonderful studios and galleries on the Vashon Island Visual Artists (VIVA) studio tour!

  My monotype print,“The Pearl Divers", is currently on exhibit at JGO Gallery, on Bainbridge Island. My mother in-law was an opera fan. Not long after she moved to the Northwest, Seattle Opera performed The Pearl Fishers, ( Les Pecheurs de Perles),  by Bizet and she declared "You will love it" and "We must attended this performance!"  At the time I was living through hellish back pain.  Perhaps the pain is what made it memorable (I stood in the back of McCall Hall for most of the performance),  but its' beautiful friendship aria, sung by the central characters Zurga and Nadir, have been with me ever since.  Thank you Doris for insisting on the experience!

  "The Queen in Winter" Monotype print with 24k gold over panel, 10" x 10".  Check her out on the 2023 VIVA Art Studio Tour, the first two weekends in May. Link  @vivartists.com Each winter, the beehive clusters, the queen at warmest, center, with the core worker bees shaking, shivering around her to maintaining a survivable heat. The fate of the hive depends on how sufficiently the hive population has prepared for winter.

My Monotype Print, “Queen Bee”, 24k gold, 10" x 10 ", is inspired by the real and historical importance of bees in myth and as pollinators. Check her out, studio  #13 , on the VIVA 2023 Spring Art Studio Tour, May 6-7 & 13-14. The self guided tour hosts 37 art studios and galleries! Visit all the studios the first two weekends in May. Bees as pollinators and the honey they produce are central to mankind's wellbeing, our creation myths, cosmologies and the sacred places of many ancient cultures.  Greek, African, Australian, South American and Hindu-Indian creation stories recognize and highlight the bee as a revered animal and sacred symbol.  Bees evolved soon after the first flowers appeared in the Cretaceous Period, an estimated 130 million years ago!  

Twin Djinn, 10 x 10 in. monotype over wood panel, (currently at Swiftwater Gallery ) is inspired by the Arabic myths of the Qareen, meaning “constant companion” or spiritual double, who is either part of you or a complementary being in another dimension. Sometimes defined as Djinn, the Qareen have parallels in Egyptian mythology, as ka, a tangible "spirit double" and in contemporary stories of the doppelgänger.

  "Jacob Dreams of Angels" is my monotype print, (1/1), with silver metal leaf, currently on exhibit at  Vashon Center for the Arts Gallery, Jan 6-29, 2023 in The Notable Collection .   The Torah and the Bible tell of Jacob’s vivid dream about a stairway or ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending. It is in this dream that the God of his grandfather Abraham and father Isaac, appears to Jacob and promises the land that he sleeps upon to his descendants and that through Jacob and his descendants that all the families of the earth shall find blessing. What a profound dream and the ladder a powerful symbol of connection between the physical and an unknown where dreams are sourced or realized.

Mauna Kea, from my sacred circle series, informed by sacred sites, sacred geographies, is a Ltd. Edition, Original Digital Print (1/12). It was created in 2019 but has never been exhibited until now. Stop by my studio 23520 147 Ave SW, Vashon Island, ( #3 ) during the 2022 VIVA Holiday Art Studio Tour , the first two weekends in December. My print “Mauna Kea” is inspired by the most prominent geographic feature of the Hawaiian Islands, a volcanic mountain named Mauna Kea and by the incredible stick maps that Polynesian and Micronesian sailor explorers once made and used to chart Pacific open water travel. In Hawaiian traditions of creation, the Earth Mother, Papahānaumoku, and the Sky Father, Wākea, created the Hawaiian Islands, with Hawai‘i Island being the first and Mauna Kea as the piko (navel or center of beginning or ending), of their union. On Mauna Kea’s sides are many shrines to the pantheon of Hawaiian gods and (it has been suggested) to astronomical phenomena. The top of Maun