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Holly Fisher
email:
holfish@mail.utexas.edu
phone: 512-789-4155
Bio:
Holly Louise Fisher has
been drawing for 31 of her 34 years. At first it was blobby,
scribble-people inside the book covers of her mother's
psychology self-help texts, later drawings on the backs of
church bulletins during sermons. She was elected 'mural
captain' in 6th grade and made dozens of murals that
year with tempera paint, many over 20 feet long. Her math
grades suffered, but somehow her spelling scores remained high.
When she was 16 she raised a decent portion of the money she
needed to travel to Japan by drawing portraits for people who
visited her father's office building.
After that she quit drawing regularly (except while taking class
notes) for 5 years. At 21 she realized that art probably
wouldn't make her any money and she was already hungry and
paying off loans from the private high school she'd attended.
She also needed expensive, special-order shoes because she'd
been born with her grandmother's crazy-narrow, hard-to-fit
feet. So she got a degree in East Asian Studies from Smith
College.
However, after three years she couldn't stand it anymore and she
petitioned to do her final semester at art school. Her
grandfather, who never wanted Holly's mother to do any drawing
but rather to 'get her lessons first', took a risk and loaned
Holly $2000 for tuition. She took classes over the next 7 years
at the Kansas City Art Institute, the Art Students League in NY,
and earned a one-year postgraduate degree from Brandeis
University. More than a dozen famous and international artists
critiqued her work. All of them told her to keep painting, and
she went into debt up to her eyeballs.
Then Holly moved to Austin, Texas. There she earned her living
painting murals of cupids, stars, floral designs and mountains
on walls and ceilings in new Hill Country residences, working in
UT's Fine Arts Library, learning some computer skills and
animation, and selling a few random things on eBay.
Unfortunately she stopped painting regularly for another 5
years, but she never stopped thinking about it. She missed
painting badly.
So now she's made some paintings and is in a show in Austin.
Here her ever-present interest in human faces, habits and
secrets, her desire to record all nuances of light and through
it portray a universal emotion or two, and her sheer amazement
at inheriting fifty pairs of shoes from her stylish grandmother
are all on display. Take a look. I hope you will enjoy. |
Artist Statement:
What I am trying to do
with painting changes every day. Feel free to ask me questions
about why I am painting piles of clothes, or my own silly
portrait, or my grandmother's shoes: I have good answers! As to
why I use the colors or materials I do, I am often less certain.
Those things are more subjective, but I will do my best to
explain. |
ABOUT THE SHOW:
This is the second painting
exhibition planned and put together by Austin painters Chris
Chappell and Michael Schliefke. In the fall of 2002, they
decided they wanted to pull together some of the stronger painters
in Austin and put on a great painting exhibition. In October
of 2003 this became a reality, as the
'Shoulda
Been a Plumber' show opened at East Austin's Blue Genie Art.
The show featured Philip Trussell, Nathan Jensen, Ethan
Azarian, and James Perrin, in addition to Chris and Michael's work.
There is another plumbing exhibition planned for October of 2004, please
contact Michael at the information listed below.
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