JAMES FISHER Notes
James Fisher’s Notes (2021) is a series of tiny pastel drawings on paper that fall under the umbrella of his extended project Linden Lea (2021 – ongoing). The Notes borrow from traditions of Pahari miniature painting, originating in Northern India (17 – 19C).
Fisher explores ideas about art, memory and the imagination in the Linden Lea work through an overarching theme of landscape. The images are informed by multiple allusions – to art history, literature, music and poetry – reflecting his interest in painting as a form of palimpsest.
‘Far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of concrete objects, pass to us as involutes (if I may coin that word) in compound experiences incapable of being disentangled, than ever reach us directly, and in their own abstract shapes.’ (Thomas de Quincey, 1845)
His project questions how contemporary landscape painting can function as a repository for recollection, reinterpretation and observation. Works range from expansive oil on linen canvases, mixed media works on panel, to small-scale paintings and works on paper.
The Linden Lea images are at once broad reaching and hermetic, with decorative schematics that reference historical aesthetic traditions from countries including India, Iran and Japan. Initial studies for the paintings are composed through a process that involves combinations of drawings and photographs which are scanned and stretched on screen to achieve an attenuation of forms inflected by Nabi principles of picture making. Some are painted over pattern papers embedded in the painting’s support, or onto shimmering metallic grounds that leave traces within the finished image. Colour is heightened to an almost hallucinatory register and imaginary characters are introduced. Strange happenings take place within the veils of an allegorical topography.
In a text for Fisher’s solo exhibition at the Eagle Gallery in 2022, the writer Martin Holman describes the cumulative effect of the Linden Lea paintings as having ‘something of the character of cantos or movements in a symphony that build a narrative or overarching theme.’. Painted in series their lush layers and textures celebrate a sense of nature apprehended – a form of imaginary escapism.
The Linden Lea project has been extended through a number of collaborations with practitioners from other disciplines, including sculptor Kate McLeod and composer Tansy Davies.
Notes 1 – 14, 2021
Pastel on paper, all circa 11 x 8cm
£475 plus VAT
Please contact the gallery for further details and available images
E emmahilleagle@aol.com
M + 44 (0)7968 538 458
