What’s On The Easel

February 2022, Vol. IV, No. 2

A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer

Another one bites the dust..

 I’m having fun with the nautical paintings of racing yachts. This one is titled “Vigilante Finishes First, America’s Cup, 1893.”

Evolution

 The above piece evolved from several photos. The first is the black and white taken at the finishing line, the second is a nice, sunny sky with rolling clouds (which the record of the race confirms were the conditions) and the third one is a painting done by an artist around 1893 of the same boat (interestingly, his depiction is identical to the photo, he just changed the location, probably to include the British boat, Invincible, that lost the race, his painting was important to getting the rigging correct). Other photos (not shown) were essential to getting the shore line of the port at Portsmouth where the race began and ended.

Supervision…

 Io has decided I need close company when painting, real close. I usually use the white canvas to my right as a test area (when I’m not using the wall or door buck) but, he has claimed the space and joins me when I paint (already stepped in the wet paint once, nor pretty, tracked all over the studio floor);

Collateral damages…

 As usual, left over paint at the end of a session is put to use creating works for the Imagination series.

The first piece, “The Seven Angels of Revelation 8:2” is rather large for the series at 17” long. The second piece is titled “Stillsuit” (and, if you don’t already know what that is, you probably will soon).

 As if I didn’t have enough on my plate…

 I decided to open a virtual gallery, Fischer Galleries. The first exhibit is installed, called “I Am Not A Photographer” . It is a response to a good friend's corrected observation that I am not a photographer. Here’s the URL, take a look:

 https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/9149100/i-am-not-a-photographer

 Want an exhibit in one of my galleries (Judy, Andrew Lisa, Jan or anyone getting this newsletter)? Email me and we can talk. 

 Immortalized in art…

 Well, maybe not, but close. An artist friend, a sculptress, was admiring my portraits and lamenting she struggled with getting the three dimensional, sculpted look in a two dimensional painting and would I show her how? Of course, I said, and we struck up a deal, a barter. She has just delivered on her end…

Most excited to get the medallion and now we will work on my end of the deal.

 And, of course, Io gets the last word…

That’s all for now. Be well, be safe and ‘What’s on your easel?’

Jim

Jim Fischer’s “Imagination” at Casa Colombo

April 8, 2022, by Tris McCall for The Jersey City Times

What does a picture of trouble look like? How does a non-figurative artist bring a feeling of danger, drama, and turmoil to the canvas?  He might take a purely formal approach, and aim to provoke his viewer with clashes of color and shape: smoky grays and savage eruptions of crimson, turbulent brushstrokes, swirls and scrapes and jagged edges. Or he might affix text to his images and hang on them proper nouns meant to instill a sense of dread.  Or, if he’s feeling bold, he might simply rely on the innate disquiet within the mind of the spectator.  He may decide that we’re all haunted, plenty, by the times we live in. All we really need to scare ourselves silly is a little push.

Jim Fischer isn’t an abstract artist.  He may be best known for his colored-pencil streetscapes of the tonier neighborhoods of Brooklyn.  Very little of the prior work he’s done is unsettling.  But in “Imagination: Serendipitous Reality,” his latest show, he pushes deeper into the murk and mist than he ordinarily goes.  He’s returned with a series of tiny apocalypses; small canvases of happy accidents, assembled from the spillover of other artworks, massaged into monstrous shape by an inspired miniaturist with a will to spook.  To make “Imagination” sing, Fischer uses all three of the techniques I described above. But he leans hardest on the third.  He’s betting that you’ll be able to feel the trouble brewing in his remarkable little paintings, some barely the side of a postcard, before you even notice his methods or read the captions. Time and again, he wins that wager.

Not everything in “Imagination” is dark.  There are breathy impressions of geishas in mid-dance, accidental flowers in bouquets of blossoming colors, a brilliant red “Die Fledermaus” on a tiny canvas (okay, maybe that one is a little dark).  But most of the show lays Fischer’s preoccupations bare, and while the artwork is invariably pretty, the ideas sure aren’t. He gives us the Ghost of Christmas Future, the Grim Reaper, specters from the Book of Revelation, a doomed butterfly.  Some of this is tongue in cheek.  But a lot of it is simply a reflection of the world as it is, which, you may have noticed, is something of a mess. Fischer, returns, often, to scenes of war: the streaked ochre sky over Hiroshima, the churning Charge of the Light Brigade, the desolate trenches of WWI, coils of barbed wire and distant, menacing infantry. Joseph Stalin is namechecked; Napoleon is, too.  That these little disasters were suggested to the artist by happenstance does not dull their edge one bit.  In belligerent 2022, no Rorchach-test reader would fault him his fatalism.

At its best — and this excellent show sustains a high-level hover for most of its length — “Imagination” is a reminder of the explosive alchemy between words and pictures, and the uncanny way that titles work to focus and fix meaning. Technically, an image on the wall is nothing but a curved paint-smear in grey, flecked with streaks of yellow and pressed under glass.  But once Fischer has named it after Dickens’s ghost, it’s impossible to see it as anything else.  The wiggle in grey takes on all the properties of a specter: the hunched posture, the hooded head, the seductive, beckoning quality, the wispy menace. How much did Fischer enhance the original accident?  Does it matter?

“Imagination” will hang at IECC Casa Colombo (380 Monmouth) through the end of the month. While the subject matter isn’t always happy, the occasion certainly is.  The exhibition is the first to be held in the pretty second-floor space in two years.  Fischer is well suited to be the baptist at the gallery’s rebirth: he was the guiding force behind many of the gallery’s online activities during its period of closure, and he curated the “Imagination” show himself.  But it’s his knack for revelatory storytelling that truly makes him a fit for a visual arts institution that shares a brownstone with a local history museum. This is a man who, through an amalgam of words and images, can coax a boat race out of an assembly of black lines and suggest the play of moonlight in a garden through blotches of white paint.  He’s here to conjure significance where there was none — even if that significance turns out to be the stuff of nightmares.

What’s On The Easel

January 2022, Vol. IV, No. 1

A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer

Happy New Year!

What’s on the easel…Something completely different (again)

I am at the point with the model of a racing yacht I am restoring where I needed a guide to the rigging. I found it online in an old black and white photograph which so inspired me I decided to do a painting. I found a great photo of a storm at sea for background and toned the whole thing down to get “Racing a Storm in Moonlight”. 

It quickly became a favorite on my website and is a good example of how a painting can overcome some of the problems with photography. (The frame was found by Steph on the street and during restoration was able to determine it was most likely at least 250 years old, far out!)

And, of course, the Imagination series benefits from my recent works (what do you see?)...

I’ve been building up paint wiped on a rage for some time. It was now ready to reveal it’s artistic secrets. Here’s what the rag looked like, ready to be sliced and diced. What can you see?

And here’s what came out.

On the left is titled “If you surround yourself with clowns, you should not be surprised when your life begins to resemble a circus.” from a motivational speaker, Steve Maraboli (and there's a lot of secondary figures in the piece, see what you can find). On the right the title, from Revelations, is “And I saw another angel flying through the sky, carrying the eternal Good News to proclaim to the people who belong to this world.”

A new, spontaneous method to work with…

I am in the process of changing all the Imagination pieces into black frames primarily by painting found wooden frames black. At the end of each session (and each frame takes three coats) I paint out the brush and clean it (it’s acrylic paint, I run the brush under the faucet). Sooooooooo, I started taking pieces of mat board to paint out the spare paint, quickly, just a few seconds. This piece took three seconds in one continuous brushstroke (titled Sorrow).

What fun!

Sooner or later, I guess…

My exhibition of the 48 Views of Brownstone Brooklyn has, as you might expect, been delayed again. Thank you covid. It will happen sooner or later. I’ll keep you posted.

On the home front…

We have finally formalized Steph’s office. The desk is adjustable for standing and sitting, she loves it.

We have had the roof replaced, a full tear up and replace. The contractor did a great job (and only took two days). But, there was one caveat. A few days after the installation we got torrential rain. Now, our drainpipe actually runs through the center of the house from the flat roof and down into the basement floor. In order to prevent debris from falling in they stuffed some plastic into it. One problem, they forgot to remove the plug and it started to drift down the pipe,.Torrential rain = disaster in the basement as the pipe filled and overflowed. Water ran down the inner wall to the basement. 

A mess. But it’s all been cleaned up now (paid for by the contractor) and we are happy with our new roof.  

And, of course, Io gets the last word…

That’s all for now. Stay well. And what’s on your easel?

Jim

Jim Fischer, 530 Liberty Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07307

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What’s On The Easel

December 2021, Vol. III, No. 12

A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer

Once again, there is nothing on the easel.

But that’s not to say I’ve been sitting on my hands. The big project was the annual holiday card and this year, as those of you who are on my list know, was something completely different (and lots of fun to do). Here it is in comic strip form:

It’s deja vu all over again …

(The following item was prepared for this newsletter. Ah, but it now appears covid has once again delayed it so, make note but don’t get your hopes up, ‘official’ notice to come soon),

My series of paintings of Brooklyn, 48 Views of Brownstone Brooklyn, was supposed to show in the Casa Colombo gallery in April of 2020. Weeeell, something got in the way. But, finally, all is not lost (we hope, given the new strain of the virus), the exhibition will be up for the month of January.

There will be an artist’s reception on January 8th and I hope that those of you who can make it will be there. So, keep your fingers crossed, official notice will be emailed at the end of this month.

Showtime!

It’s the holiday season and many art venues are doing their annual ‘small pieces’ exhibitions ( small pieces = cheaper prices = more sales is the theory) and, given the nature of my Imagination series (most are 5x7 or less), I’m in three venues.

This grouping, called ‘The Garden at Dusk’ is gone to a venue in downtown Jersey City. 

Up on the rooftop…

Well, Santa should have an easier time landing on our roof this year, we just had it replaced, total tear up and rebuild, right down to the stringers. It’s very nice.

(I was planning to put a pic up of the new roof but the contractor failed to deliver one, isn’t that just like contractors, almost finished…)

Thanksgiving was with family, finally…

Left to right: Jake (Nat’s significant other), Steph, brother Rick, Juin (Ricks significant other) and Nat. Of course, I’m behind the camera (can’t leave the job to amateurs, eh).

Onward to the new year and here to welcome us all…

Yup, you got it, The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come from Dicken’s A Christmas Carol (and part of the Imagination series) greets you (yeah, I know, that’s a grim visage but, be of good cheer, at the end even Scrooge is redeemed). And Io demands to get his two cents in, as well…

That’s all for now. Stay well. And what’s on your easel?

Jim

Jim Fischer, 530 Liberty Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07307

To unsubscribe to this enewsletter, simple return this email with the subject line ‘unsubscribe.’

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What’s On The Easel

November 2021, Vol. III, No. 11

A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer

Uncle Mike…

My uncle recently passed and his daughter, my cousin Mollie, posted a number of pics. I found the one used for this portrait irresistible and so…

I used a different technique than I usually do. I mostly use the Renaissance technique of layered glazes, pioneered by DiVinci. But this one was done in what’s called ‘wet-on-wet’ (as was Steph’s shown below). It’s a much quicker technique. This portrait took only 15 hours over five days as opposed to the glazing that takes a month. It’s also less forgiving, kinda like watercolor work. Here’s the timeline: 

Of course…

The portrait gave me plenty of materials for additions to the Imagination series.

From left to right: George Washington, Red Hair Rising, Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, and Dusk (for the full titles you will have to go to my website, www.theartistjimfischer.com).

And this one:

Called ‘The Annunciation to the Shepherds’, it’s the one-hundreth piece in the collection and, as you might expect, I have run out of room in gallery:

On to the bedroom!

A Sunday Afternoon

  One Sunday afternoon, having some time on my hands, I knocked out Shani’s ‘official portrait’.

Publish or perish (I guess)

Each year the Jersey City artist's association I belong to, ProArts Jersey City, does a book of member’s works. The catch is, you have to write some poetry (or, for one year, a recipe) to go with it. This year it was a cinquain and here is my published entry, hot off the presses:

As Winter sets in…

The gardens are all cleared and prepared for the winter (except for the garlic which gets planted later this month), the furniture and statues are all stowed. So, it’s time to get back to the shipyard and hopefully finish the two ships I’m working on  by Spring.

That’s all for now. Stay well. And what’s on your easel?

Jim

Jim Fischer, 530 Liberty Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07307

To unsubscribe to this enewsletter, simple return this email with the subject line ‘unsubscribe.’

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What’s On The Easel

October 2021, Vol. III, No. 10

A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer

Shipped…

The giclee printer got a workout this month, now the Kruse women portraits and a full portfolio of signed and numbered prints are all out the door and have been delivered to their respective owners.

JCAST…

A sure sign we are getting back to normal, the Jersey City Artists Studio Tour, canceled last fall, has returned. Once again I opened my studio for tours (vaccine and mask required) and had about 20 people visit (and that’s considered pretty good for a studio not in one of the big artist studio buildings downtown). Certainly good for the ego. 

I also had two pieces, ‘Hiroshima” (top) and ‘No Man’s Land in the Snow’ shown at the ProArts Jersey City Gallery for the event. 

And I volunteered at ProArts gallery to sit st the door for a few hours, making friends with this creative artist selling, as you might expect, cakes and cookies to the visitors.

600…

So, I got the ‘clean it out’ bug in the basement, tossing lots of stuff that’s been just hanging out in storage for the past ten years. Steph had two boxes filled with papers that she went through for me. Among them was this pile:

Unbeknown-est to me, it appears she had kept all of the email communications between us for the first two years of our relationship, starting with setting up our first date in August, 2000, 600+ pages. What’s most interesting is what happens halfway through the communications, September 11, 2001. While it may not be of any interest to anyone, I am cataloging the documents in date and time order and scanning them for posterity, or whatever.

400 …

That’s the estimated number of tomatoes produced by the garden this year and processed down to three gallons of homemade sauce (tomatoes, garlic, peppers and parsley all grown in the garden).

Under the topic ‘Theatre of the Absurd’…

You probably don’t know, but Jersey City has the most diverse ethnic population of any city in the nation. I sometimes joke that it feels like we’re living in a third world country, you just can’t figure out which one. In our little community, with a population of about 6,000, called The Western Slope, we have Indians, Pakistanis, Egyptians, Sikhs, Puerto Ricans, Equadorans, Koreans and Phillipinos and, at a whopping 17%, Caucasians (and this is just on our block). In fact, 76% of the people in our neighborhood were born abroad (and that’s not a bad thing as they are, for the most part, white collar workers in tech and healthcare with a median yearly income of $130,000). 

Now, coming from where they do, some don’t understand we have rules and regulations. Like this neighbor behind us:

Want to extend your house, add a couple of rooms? Heck, just build out that old deck structure in the back, it was falling apart anyway (Lisa, show Ray this pic, he’ll love it). NOT! Needless to say, work was halted by the buildings department, an expensive lesson was had about living in America, I’m sure.

That’s all for now. Stay well. And what’s on your easel?

Jim

Jim Fischer, 530 Liberty Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07307

To unsubscribe to this enewsletter, simple return this email with the subject line ‘unsubscribe.’

To subscribe to this monthly email, drop me a note at theartistjimfischer@yahoo.com

What’s On The Easel

September 2021, Vol. III, No. 9

A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer

Finished

At least phase I of the Kruse’ Women project, the actual portraits (colored pencil on paper):

This is probably the only time all ten portraits will hang together. Each portrait, along with prints of the entire set (below), will be sent to its owner.

Trickery

I did take the time to do a small PhotoShop project for a friend. He wanted what I would call a ‘whimsy’ photo of his niece and nephew (whose last name is Knight). A bit of fun.

A Visit from Ida

Of course, the big event this month was Ida. The storm dumped 9 inches of rain in two hours. The result was a raging river through our back garden that flowed onto the dek in a 15 foot long cascade. But the scary part was it began to build up against the foundation behind the house as it flowed around eventually cascading down the alley and flowing over our front steps (white water rafting, anyone?).

If it had breached the kitchen door the basement would have flooded. It came close. Unfortunately, our new lawn was covered in silt and we are now in the process of trying to save it. And then there was some collateral damage, this Opossum juvenile was found trapped under the alleyway door.   

Other things …

This month’s artistic production was, and is, further limited by house chores. Besides the lawn repairs, it was time to clean the stained glass skylight (a scary job hanging over the staircase).

Other stuff stealing my time include painting the iron railings in the front, deep cleaning the hallway/stairway carpets and washing all the windows (all 22 of them, inside and out). So, for the time being I guess I am more handyman than artist.

That’s all for now. Stay well. And what’s on your easel?

Jim

Jim Fischer, 530 Liberty Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07307

To unsubscribe to this enewsletter, simple return this email with the subject line ‘unsubscribe.’

To subscribe to this monthly email, drop me a note at theartistjimfischer@yahoo.com

What’s On The Easel

August 2021, Vol. III, No. 8

A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer

Inspiration

My uncle Mike passed away recently. I didn’t really know him but I do keep in touch with his daughter, Mollie. She included a photo of him in her announcement to friends he had passed and I was inspired. 

The challenge will be painting like Van Gogh. The technique is called wet-on-wet, just keep painting. An interesting exercise in a technique I have only just dabbled in. We shall see.

Legacy

I have expanded on the two portraits of Kruse women, Steph’s sister Brenda and niece Heather. I have added her other niece, Beth.

And on the easel, Steph…

Five more Kruse women to go to make the full set of three generations. The plan is to give each of them their original portrait as well as a full set of the nine in a box set of prints.

Another job…

Natalie took a booth at the gift show in Javits, NYGift, and, as usual, I was drafted to do new graphics for the booth I designed a couple of years ago.

(And, yes, the booth graphic is a blow up of one of my wiping cloths from painting).

In the garden …

The garlic crop is in and curing in the basement! Now, on to the tomatoes!

Fighting back with art…

Look at what they are building behind us! It’s a monster (housing two 'luxury' condos for $800,000 each). Noting that they will be looking straight down at our garden and into our second floor windows (but, hey, that’s urban living), I decided to give design something for them to look at, a mural (a Fall project):

It’s one of my favorite Matisse paintings and will be 22 feet by 22 feet (and I’ll bet they complain about the nudity, whatever).

Retirement?

I left the corporate world 16 years ago at the age of 55 to pursue a full time art career. Now, as my friends and family are retiring from their professions, I am getting the question “When are you going to retire?” (or, even sometimes, the assumption that I am retired and just ‘amusing myself’ with art). I respond to their inquiries and assumptions with the words of the artist Christo when he, too, was asked about retirement, “Artists don’t retire, they just die.” 

That’s all for now. Stay well. And what’s on your easel?

Jim

Jim Fischer, 530 Liberty Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07307

To unsubscribe to this enewsletter, simple return this email with the subject line ‘unsubscribe.’

To subscribe to this monthly email, drop me a note at theartistjimfischer@yahoo.com

What’s On The Easel

July 2021, Vol. III, No. 7

A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer

Finished!

And now off the easel. The background for each portrait changed three times before I settled. A lot of over

painting that will delight art historians some century from now (I can dream, can’t I).

And while I now have all this downtime …

On the left is Steph’s brother’s daughter, Heather, and on the right is Steph’s sister, Brenda. I originally planned to do these portraits in watercolor (and was not looking forward to it, very difficult) but I decided to try colored pencils. Worked out pretty well, eh.

An after-thought…

When a work is finished I frame it and put it on the wall, which means I will look at it from time to time. Sometimes, while looking, I see something new (or something to correct). In this case, Asteroids, had a white smudge in the lower right corner and I thought it might be used to enhance the effect of the image. As you can see, now the asteroid has some place to go (“Oh, no, Mr. Bill!”).

In the gardens …

The gardens are all doing great and the front perennial garden is particularly spectacular this year (as shown, I designed this garden to be viewed from the porch above which is, for the most part, how I view it).

A little help with the harvest …

NOT! Our usually ‘cute’ neighborhood groundhog decided to lunch one day in the lettuce patch. We quickly chased him away and harvested the crop for us. He came back a few days later to munch on the green beans and we are now taking appropriate steps to deter him from returning (no, we can’t shoot him although two websites said they make good eating).

And did you know: Groundhogs are also called Woodchucks. But, that name is a misnomer, they don’t chew (or throw) wood. The name is derived from the native Indian name for the animal, wuchuk, pronounced woo-chuck. (And now, you, like me, know far more than you probably thought you need to about these little creatures).

Memories…

If anything is true about our times, we certainly are being left with some interesting memories. I was recently downloading my phone’s pics and found these: 

A year ago this July I had a dental emergency and needed to go to my dentist, Kenny, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I rode my bike to the PATH train and then from 34th Street up to 67th, planning to avoid humans as much as possible. No problem. The PATH train was empty, just me both ways for all four trips I had to make, Fifth Avenue (at 57th Street) was void of cars (a bike rider’s paradise) and, most astounding for a day in late July, peak tourist season, the plaza at Rockefeller Center was empty. Quite a sight. 

That’s all for now. Stay well. And what’s on your easel?

Jim

Jim Fischer, 530 Liberty Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07307

To unsubscribe to this enewsletter, simple return this email with the subject line ‘unsubscribe.’

To subscribe to this monthly email, drop me a note at theartistjimfischer@yahoo.com

What’s On The Easel

June 2021, Vol. III, No. 6

A monthly newsletter from Jim Fischer

Finally!

Yup, one day I just walked into the studio, dumped some paint on the palette and .went at it. Some of my friends have been encouraging me to keep a photo record of the progress so, here goes:

What’s left are the backgrounds. I try to choose something that will reflect the person. Here’s what’s planned. 

The one for me, on the left, was easy (and an obvious choice if you look closely at the upper left window, hello Steph). The one for Rick reflects his enjoyment of the outdoors, hiking, biking, etc. (yes it’s an old picture, Rick is the kid on the left). If you look close at the last of the progressive images you can see the sketches for the backgrounds.

New additions to the Imagination series …

As you might expect, major paintings result in smaller, more spontaneous works.

From left to right, “Wotan invoking Loki, the Norse god of fire, to surround Brunhilde's rock with fire,” “Asteroid,” “The Milky Way,” and “The Grim Reaper with Dead Rabbit (The Death of Hazel),” Do not be mislead that these are accidental paintings. They are not. They are simply limited by the available paint remaining at the end of a session, but, they are developed deliberately once they begin to look like something. The names are obtained by researching what I perceive they depicted. For example, for The Grim Reaper: I googled “Grim reaper and dead rabbit” and, low and behold, there was a hit on it: At the end of the book Watership Down one of the main characters, the rabbit Hazel, is gathered by the Grim Reaper (in the form of a black rabbit) into his family.   

Promoting myself in print with a surprise…

One of the features of the service I use for my archives and website, ArtMajeur, is their promotion opportunities. They have a print publication circulated primarily in Europe and I decided to put an ad in it. I was pleasantly surprised when I received a proof of the ad … it was in French. I rather like the way “The Doomed Butterfly” is translated.

Street finds, a distraction for a distraction …

One day recently Natalie noticed a house being cleaned out across from her building. Being a great seeker of ‘obtainium” (stuff recovered from the street) she went over to see what was up. In the basement she found this vintage ship model, something a teenager might do in the 1930s (kinda a vintage version of video games). It was a mess, a thick layer of dust and much of the rigging busted up. So, I am taking a break from the Volante and restoring the boat.

One of the main attractions of the model is it’s full set of meticulously made sails, with reef lines as well. It’s a nice piece that will fit in well with our Arts & Crafts decor.

“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille” …

As you can see, Shani has adjusted to the good life of being our pet. The next portrait for the easel.

That’s all for now. Be well, be safe. And what’s on your easel?

Jim

Jim Fischer, 530 Liberty Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, 07307

To unsubscribe to this enewsletter, simple return this email with the subject line ‘unsubscribe.’

To subscribe to this monthly email, drop me a note at theartistjimfischer@yahoo.com