Recommending An Artist, Book, Woman's Vision

I finally broke down and bought the one thing I've wanted for years. This painter is my particular favorite in realism in current artists. Every hint I dropped to everyone did not get it here, so of course ordering myself worked. I now can see the plates. And the dishes.

This is a book of the paintings of Janet Fish. Do you know her? Beautiful reproductions of her work are found here with that excellent color. Well-done book. She is the master of small intimate scenes of objects, still-life paintings in her hands become grand scale. They are thing portraits, really of highly personal and evocative objects. They hold a mastery of space, time, life composition( these things are connected to her relationship to the world, people/events/memories represented by them), and ultimately are about light. She has been a favorite of mine since 1975 when I first came to know of her work. And saw her. I have painted tied to still life and observations of "small intimate things in a life".I strive to maintain a colloquial, personal "voice" that hints at the rural, an American construct for me, the power in a specific context of ordinariness, the honoring of a simple life. I've been forever hung up in several painters that seem able to take some "things" and imbue them with the "self", different than words, different than say a short story, but just the same insightfulness about the artist in their choices, their moment in time. Yes I finally got to my point. Moment in time. With Fish I always feel a freeze in the one thing we know can never freeze, time. So I've written and worked in similar fashion, and her work was a kind of visual inspiration and teacher. But I saw very few of the great oeuvre of works up until this volume. Precious few pictures I had, that spoke so clearly I returned to them over and over.

Fish is the master of these wonderful, color intensified, light charged, dancing, and hope filled positive pictures. Glassware, her objects speak thing to thing within the paintings. The paintings seem composed to reach out and grab you and like dancing reflections bounce you around the interior spaces. I'm always utterly captivated by her work. Held. Suspended, delighted and in love with the rich color. I'm inclined to emotion, feeling, sensual delight and these paintings are just places I want to remain luxuriating within as if in a fantasy. I have not really seen the entire book yet, though it's three days in my hands. I stop and look and fall into several pictures and put it down to just shake my head at her ability and training. The mark is painterly for me; she was never photo-real to me.Though she can be grouped there. But she was a realist of a sort. It is expressionistic work, it even evokes Bonnard (who I might add completely causes me to lose my reality for the pleasure of his vision) and I'm lost in one work not ready yet to go on to another.Sensualist that i tend to be. If I were seeing them full scale it would be an ultimate experience.
I read there is an exhibit in New York for a month going on now and I'm hopeful my daughter's college looking will take me there during this time as she goes to her interviews. Did I mention her Merit Finalist status? It may be wishful on my part, but I'd like to see current Fish works. I've seen so few in person where the scale astounds me. From what I see on-line they are growing more elaborated, fragmented, rich with movement. Almost baroque. But who knows, I need to go look.
I thought of Fish, Chuck Close and Phillip Pearlstein (genius painters/teachers) as the three artists of my college days that spoke to me in work about image making and to finally, finally own this book is really remarkable. It arrived damaged in mid book but I can't return it as I don't want to give it up. Silly but it's true.

Fish is such an accomplished American woman artist. I'd recommend this book to anyone in a heartbeat. I wish I'd gotten it for myself earlier but it was a very nice Valentine's treat for just myself, as her work inspires and is such a significant body of art to watch evolve through the pages. So now, for me, she will be associated with Valentines and my acting on a little self-love.(cringe at wording) One day I'll read the text. It'll be terrific, but for now I'm content to bask in the light of her paintings as it reflects through all the pieces of glassware. Utterly beautiful and an illumination of fiery light falling gems. I'm really in a kind of almost heaven.