Open Walls at Micro Museum
Rachael Fischer - Installations, Drawings, Painting
June 10, 2006 |
Rachael Fischer Artist's Statement
Though usually abstract in appearance, I work with the follwing ideas in my paintings: nature, invented landscape, the Bible, my own myths / tall tales, notions of shelter, journeys, battle / conflict, long distances, and growing. While these things exist in the work, they are conveyed through a very sparse narrative, which just hints at what is going on in the story. Another way that I attempt to avoid specificity is to eliminate all human elements, and all elements that would indicate a certain time period. I like to think that these scenes are either images of pre-histry or post-history. The personification / superimposing of human struggle on the animal / nature "characters" is something I feel is important in telling the story. As a result of this positioning, feelings of humor or sadness surface in the work; this is also quite deliberate. Still, each painting yeilds something new - each one is a "fluke" in a way.
It feels like I'm dealing with sets of gently opposing things that get reconciled in the course of working. I prefer to work in a relatively small scale with acrylic paints. I choose acrylics because they dry very quickly, but I treat them as if they were oils. I work on serveral paintings at once, finishing them fairly quickly in an attempt to not get caught up in trivialities. I find that the clearest thinking and the freshest ideas come from working like this. I employ very loose brushwork contained within a small space, painting over layers without hesitation, using the layers as a way of creating colors and shapes. The act of painting is a dialog of destruction and creation, a constant stream of actions and reactions. I take pleasure in the destruction or obliteration of images, and I like that this visual obstacle can be seen in the work iteslf. I work very openly at first, then get a little more specific when I feel it's close to being done. I never start a painting with an iudea of what I want it to look like. or even what I want it to be about. I try not to give myself any rules, but the patterns of my thinking and interests keep me coming back to the same wide pools of subject matter.
