Pendulum Process
At present, my working process is very close to a meditative act. My new studio process involves physical struggle, the law of gravity, chemistry, and ingenuity. I’ve found a “viral” means of mark-making that allows for hundreds, even thousands of marks, lines, and shapes to be thrown onto the paper or canvas all at once. My process is specifically designed for EXCESS----- with so many visual ideas emerging at once, the overwhelmingly vast majority are discarded. I want the unexpected, my goal is to spark ideas that otherwise wouldn’t appear with a more deliberative, considered approach. My first stage is all about QUANTITY…. Judgement, analysis, and editing occur in later stages.
Short Biography
Anthony Fisher received his MFA from Yale University and his BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University. You can learn about his work visiting his website at anthonyfisher.net Nationally, Mr. Fisher exhibits at Galerie Mourlot in New York City. Fisher’s latest solo exhibit in NYC was in 2018, his fifth since 2003. He has received reviews of his work in Art News, Art Critical, and Painting Perceptions. Mr. Fisher’s work is included in private and public collections.
Anthony lives and paints just outside Boston in a community of other artists in what was once an elementary school. Anthony’s wife Laura is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, his two sons, Adam and Luke, are currently in PhD programs for Marine Microbiology and Plasma Physics. Anthony describes himself as a distinct “outlier” in his family… always messy, rambunctious, and playing games with paint. He has been a university teacher for twenty-seven years.
Statement about the work
The quality of drawing that particularly interests me can be measured by the extent to which it summons compelling thoughts, feelings, and ideas into the mind of the viewer. It is profound that innovations and the strategic organization of a handful of marks and erasures can both simultaneously evoke potent, vivid descriptions and the presence and sensations of an underlying psyche. Just as the carefully crafted combinations of words in a poem rely heavily on the audial sounds of those words for effective emanation of it’s content, the drawing relies on pre-cognitive visual stimulation from very particular animation imbued in the mark.
Through obsessive scraping and erasing my charcoal becomes increasingly animated and agitated. Until something emerges from my material that embodies and evokes a particular presence, I fold my constructions back into the inert material and try over and over again to provoke and imbue it with meaning. As a process, drawing is less “encumbered” than painting. Ideas and goals are more transparent and closer to the surface. Drawing always leads me to technical improvements and deeper, clearer content in my paintings. I draw as often as I paint.
Selected Exhibitions:
2018 Galerie Mourlot, NY, NY Solo Show, “Turbulent States”
2017 University of North Carolina, International Juried Show, Asheville, NC“8th Annual Drawing Discourse”
2016 Indiana University Center for Art & Design, “Drawing and the Brain”
Invitational symposium and exhibition, Columbus, IN
2015 Oresman Gallery, Smith College, Solo Show, “New Work” Smith College, Northampton, MA
First Street Gallery, NY, NY “2015 National Juried Exhibition”
2013 Galerie Mourlot, NY, NY Solo Show, “Portraits”
2012 Unit One Gallery, Group Show, 798 Art District, Beijing China, “Drawing and Drawings”
Markowicz Fine Art, Art Fair, Miami FL, “Art Basel/Miami Beach”
Wright State University, Two-Person Show, Dayton OH,
“Donald Beal and Anthony Fisher: Paintings and Drawings”
2011 Manifest Creative Research Gallery, Cincinnati OH,
“Tapped: Professors and Former Students” Cotuit Center for The Arts, Cotuit MA, Solo Show,
“Anthony Fisher: Paintings and Drawings 2007-2011”
Zolla Lieberman Gallery, Chicago IL, “Group Exhibition”
2010 Galerie Mourlot, NY, NY Solo Show, “Portraits”
2009 Eli Marsh Gallery, Amherst College, Solo Show, “Recent Paintings”
2008 Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, NY, NY “Meat After Meat Joy”
2007 Galerie Mourlot, NY, NY Solo Show, “New Paintings”
2004 Greer Museum, Rio Grande OH, “Five New England Artists”
2003 Prince Street Gallery, NY, NY Solo Show, “New Paintings”
2002 Prince Street Gallery, NY, NY “New Gallery Artists”
2001 Bowling Green University, Bowling Green OH, “Personal Spaces”
1997 Robert Steele Gallery, NY NY, “Intimate Universe (Revisited)”
1996 O’Hara Gallery, NY NY, “The Small Painting”
Education:
MFA, Yale University School of Art, New Haven CT
BFA, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA
Teaching:
2008 – present Associate Professor, University of MA, Dartmouth
1999 – 2008 Faculty, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Claflin School Studios
449 Lowell Avenue
Newtonville, 02460
Telephone: 617-964-2845
a.anthonyfisher@comcast.net