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In The Abstract
Barbara Fisher explores creative process
Fisher's drawing style depends upon the geometric elements of the art: the point, the line, the plane, the solid. Color in her work isn't simply about relationship (harmonious or otherwise), nor even a means of establishing space in the picture. Color is energy. Color is symbol. It's the emotion that establishes the mood of the painting within which the line establishes the action.
The "paintings" appear at once naive and sophisticated. Yet it's the counterpoint of the reductive child-like drawing style with the organized compositional grid that creates a cohesive image. This seeming incongruity works especially well in the small 12 x 12 pieces, such as the one called "Traveling." These square objects have been segmented both horizontally and vertically to create 11 separate compartments. Each compartment contains a different image from Fisher's personal lexicon of rhythmic line and color. Is it a single painting, or 11 paintings on one picture plane?
These pictographic pictures feature multiple images at once. The relationship between the images, other than being a part of the artist's visual language, is not clear. And that's OK; in fact, I would venture to say that perhaps that's part of the intent. These objects strike me as the visual manifestation of free-flowing thought, of images that float to consciousness only to be replaced by yet other images somehow but not quite related. To some extent, they make "thought" visual, which despite what we think is often anything but linear.
The show consists of both large and small objects. In the larger scale works, the viewing experience is dominated by the compartments, whereas the intimacy of the smaller canvases assert the entirety rather than the parts. The smaller images are more realized objects, whereas the larger images are more decorative.
Barbara Fisher's work is very personal; it's visual and pictorial, not intellectual or literary. It is most concerned with the relationships of lines and color planes and picture space, creating abstractions that are not abstractions. Most of all, this work is about the creative process, especially creation as an intuitive act arising from the particular spirit of the artist and affected by all of her experiences, remembered consciously or not, including the images, materials and forms in which she works.
New Paintings by Barbara Fisher will be on display through August 31 at Hidell Brooks Gallery, Suite 130, 1910 South Boulevard. For more information, call 334-7302.
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