No Inconvenience Too Great or Small November 9, 2012

Taking inspiration from his grandfather’s fedora which strongly resembled a 1955 Studebaker Commander and a moustache that resembled the car’s grill, Mark P. Fisher has been pondering the question “Where did Pop stop and the car begin ?” Fifty years later, when he’s not studying the deep history of painting, the memory of that day stays with him and inspired 12 new irresistible paintings.

Mark P. Fisher’s studies about the Baroque Period of Painting (1580-1720), culminated in a series of four lectures delivered in August 2012 at The Atelier school of Classical Realism in Oakland, CA. In researching for the talks, Fisher was secretly looking for something to be interested in and to recharge himself as a painter. At age 57, he had tired of his own universe as constructed by previous studies and longed to “shake down” his own house, his own philosophy, and to build anew.

Part of Mark P. Fisher’s psychological construction has been his interest in Metaphysics (including ‘Pataphysics) as it pertains to Painting. By this, he means the “invisible” parts of Painting, such as a thought versus something material (i.e. a piece of fruit in a still life). Strangely enough, it was German Expressionist Max Beckmann, writing in 1938, who gave him a vital clue as to what was CENTRAL to the Baroque Period and also gave him a way into the future of his own Painting. “ If you wish to get hold of the invisible, you must penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible.”

Beckmann’s words pointed to direct observational painting as a healthy way in which to proceed in one’s life as a painter.
By not knowing, Mark P. Fisher hopes he may be able to stumble into something worth knowing, worth painting, and worth viewing.

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