A Question of Emphasis: Louise Fishman Drawing

Surveying the American artist’s multimedia works on paper from 1964 to the present

American artist Louise Fishman’s (born 1939) physical and process-driven work reimagines the Abstract Expressionist model into a vehicle for dialogue about history and emotion centered in the artist’s identities as Jewish, feminist and lesbian. Though she is primarily a painter, Fishman has worked with a number of different mediums to create works on paper since the early 1960s. A Question of Emphasis presents a vast selection of these works in a single volume, encompassing collage, oil and wax, thread, acrylic text, ink, charcoal, printmaking, oil stick, watercolor and tempera. Fishman conceives of her works on paper not as studies for later paintings but as discrete pieces of art, generally small- and medium-scale and frequently sculptural and tactile. New writing as well as an interview between Fishman and artist Ulrike Muller accompany a wide selection of works.