Karen Fisher

43×32in. acrylic and charcoal on collaged un-stretched canvas [2024]

Inspired by the anxiety I feel surrounding America’s contentious domestic political environment, climate catastrophes, and ongoing horrific images of conflicts happening around the world.

I want to somehow escape and finding a way to express that desire in my work is keeping me from actually packing up and taking off.

In this piece, the figure stacks moving boxes and is positioned between two spaces. The chair faces away and is a kind of barrier to the rest that the figure is seeking.

63×27in. acrylic, charcoal and marker on collaged un-stretched canvas [2024]

The title relates to the fact that I work out of my studios in CO and OH.

I began this piece in June in CO and finished it in early November in OH.

The inclusion of the Chickadee is one I traced from a chickadee that my dad drew and painted in 2016.

My dad was in the later stages of Alzheimer's and having him paint with me in my studio gave him moments of clarity and access to a wonderful visual language.

He referenced the pictures I took of birds-in-flight that came to my bird feeder.

In November in OH, the Chickadee’s are very active taking seeds from my feeder and flying off to stuff them into bark crevices.

Centered around collaged and painted un-stretched canvas that extends in irregular directions, my work expresses the complex search for home through the fluidity of memory, identity, and belonging.

The heavy emotional impact of witnessing my father in late-stage Alzheimer’s fuels my attempt to visually capture the uncanny nature of the phenomenon of wandering, and his incessant search for a place he once called home.

Because I live and work in two places, my work also challenges notions of stability and rootedness and evokes my feelings of in-betweenness, fragmentation and belonging. My search for belonging mirrors a journey without a destination. My home is a site of perpetual transformation and renegotiation and an ever-shifting landscape.

I use acrylic, oil, charcoal, oil pastels, found textiles and objects on collaged, un-stretched canvas to express what is uncanny about this search and offers a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of home.

56x34in acrylic, oil, found cut-up quilt on un-stretched linen [2024]

44x30in. found textiles, thread and acrylic on un-stretched canvas [ 2024]

83x39in. acrylic, found papers, found textiles on un-stretched canvas [2024]

41x33in. acrylic, found textiles, found papers collaged on un-stretched canvas [2024]

53×24in. acrylic and charcoal on collaged un-stretched canvas [2024]