Craig V Fisher
Toledo, Ohio
Continually seeking the transformation that takes place from a concept to a thought-provoking print or multiple.
Message
Born and raised in Northwest Ohio, Craig Fisher began his career under the influence of his father Vaughn who was himself a visual artist. His experiences at home and abroad honed his skills in draftsmanship and painting, but what he has learned to love is printmaking. “It allowed me permission to have the media take me into uncharted directions. Additionally, I didn’t have to worry about color necessarily which often stops the flow of a graphic idea.” That transformation was evident from the very first image pulled from a stone lithograph or copperplate. “I was immediately transfixed by how different my original inspiration would appear. Not only was my drawing reversed as in a mirror, but it was infused with textures and tonal nuances that I had not envisioned.”
When asked how he has found his career in the arts, most often he says through the encouragement of family. “As a grade school student, my mother would swap her services as a hairdresser so I could get lessons from a local oil painter. My father was a bit of self-taught artist, and my grandmother would join me in plein-air landscape painting sojourns”, Craig remembered.
He has shown his work extensively throughout the United States and abroad. His most recent one man show “Impressions of the Monumental” was on display in January 2021 at ArtlInk Contemporary Gallery in Fort Wayne, Indiana (https://www.artlinkfw.org/impressions-of-the-monumental). More recently he was awarded a 2024 grant from the Ohio Arts Council to pursue his project to integrate color into his etchings via traditional Japanese woodblock techniques. He is scheduled to participate in a 2025 spring residency at Morgan Conservatory.
Mr. Fisher received his BA from the University of Toledo. Mr Fisher is a member the Mid American Print Council. Along with private collections, many of his creations can be seen in the collections of BGSU digital Library, Purdue University Galleries, University of Dallas Collection, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum Contemporary Print Collection, Crosby Gardens Festival of the Arts Collection, Schedel Gardens, University of Tiffin Collection, and Xavier University.
Ohio Department of Parks and Recreation USAF Art Collection, Washington, DC Arts Toledo Area Arts Council Collection, Commission of Greater Toledo/ Art in Public Spaces Collection. Along with producing limited edition intaglio and relief prints from his home studio, he is also working on oil paintings and other works on paper. His work can be seen on his website “ibispressstudio.org”.
His work is currently represented by 20 North Gallery in Toledo as well as The Toledo Museum of Art’s “Collectors Corner
Statement
From my first introduction to the pencil, I have been a draftsman. From there and onto college I have been working to find that fine line between the artist and the draftsman. From the early temples of Karnak to the stain glass cathedral windows of the late Middle Ages, images convey a message or a story. In those creations, an artist/draftsman had to craft a story board to arrive at a solution.
For me, printmaking seemed a natural extension of that story that allowed me to carry drawing forward into making multiples. In intaglio printmaking, I fell in love with the wonderful marks that came from copperplate work which had a density and freshness that pen, and pencil could not match. My challenge was to explore how better to harness those qualities and allow them free reign.
My subject matter is varied. I am not a generalist in my approach to the creative process. A draft sketch can often have a change of direction brought on by the iterative process itself. Most of my pieces are large as I take keen interest in the “monumental,” the pillared icon, and the undiscovered remnant. My lifelong interest in world cultures and the natural sciences have opened potential content that I find challenging. I like historic architectural and leverage it to suggest a background narrative. These landscapes can be incomplete or bundled with unrelated structures that occupy a stage or tableau. I sometimes use pure geometric shapes as mobile avatars, while others may use a particular technique to allow the print a greater visual range. Each print (or painting) requires many iterations before a final approach is realized.