Louise Fishman ( 1939 – 2021) was an American abstract painter from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For many years she lived and worked in New York City, where she died.
Fishman's painting style at first gave her some trouble in being recognized. She exhibited only occasionally in the 1960s, a period in her life when she produced primarily grid-based work. During the later 1970s her abstract work was linked with Pattern painting. Large scale works like Grand Slam (1985) and Cinnabar and Malachite (1986) reflected her bold visions, and caused many reviewers to label her work as having elements of neo-expressionism.As the feminist movement gained strength in the 1970s, Fishman abandoned her minimalist-inspired, grid-like paintings and began making work that reflected women's traditional tasks. These pieces required the sort of repetitive steps that characterize activities like knitting, piecing, or stitching. Returning later to the masculine realm of abstract painting, Fishman still sought a way to distinguish what she was doing from the work of male artists, both historic and contemporary.The resulting compositions combine gestural brushwork with an orderly structure: it is as if Fishman built or wove—her paintings, starting from a foundation and carefully adding to them, layer upon interlocking layer. Wikipedia
"As with all good paintings, those of Louise Fishman speak for themselves, powerfully. To realise painting as art sprang not only from her will to do so, but also from her strong background in the study of painting through actually making paintings, in depth, wholly, and streadfastly." - Suzan Frecon
"I'm allowing myself much more freedom in the studio. I would have never allowed all that white space of the canvas to be there before. I wanted to give everything a lot of richness, but this is a different story. Now it's about giving reign to what paint does on its own. And I do think there's something magical about painting. Something is made out of paint, aside from the purpose it gives my life." - Louise Fishman
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