Abstract painter Louise Fishman is drawn to personal experience, stories, and political activism. Through the 1960s, she produced primarily Minimalist-inspired, grid-like paintings. In the early 1970s, in pursuit of a more definitively feminine practice, she gave up abstract painting, which was considered the hotbed of art world machismo, to explore sculptural processes like sewing and knitting, which were traditionally defined as “women’s work.” Returning to painting in 1973, she produced a series called “Angry Women,” which announced the expressive brushwork and muddy pigment that are hallmarks of her mature style. In 1988, a trip to Eastern Europe, where she visited two concentration camps, reinforced the dark, mysteriously emotive quality of Fishman’s vigorously worked paintings, including her 1989 series of eight paintings, “Remembrance and Renewal,” in which she mixed ashes and beeswax into her paints.
Abstract painter Louise Fishman is drawn to personal experience, stories, and political activism. Through the 1960s, she produced primarily Minimalist-inspired, grid-like paintings. In the early 1970s, in pursuit of a more definitively feminine practice, she gave up abstract painting, which was considered the hotbed of art world machismo, to explore sculptural processes like sewing and knitting, which were traditionally defined as “women’s work.” Returning to painting in 1973, she produced a series called “Angry Women,” which announced the expressive brushwork and muddy pigment that are hallmarks of her mature style. In 1988, a trip to Eastern Europe, where she visited two concentration camps, reinforced the dark, mysteriously emotive quality of Fishman’s vigorously worked paintings, including her 1989 series of eight paintings, “Remembrance and Renewal,” in which she mixed ashes and beeswax into her paints.
