Louise Fishman

(American, 1939–2021)

Louise Fishman is a contemporary American artist known for her expressive abstract paintings. Rooted in her experiences as a feminist and advocate for LGBT rights, Fishman’s works are channels for the cathartic expression of memories and anger as well as the process of painting itself. Employing trowels, squeegees, and paint-laden brushes, Fishman develops her work over time, often starting with a one emotion and finishing with another. “Almost everything is covered in my paintings. I go through numerous changes in them,” she has said of her practice. “I used to think that I was losing a lot of images. More recently I discovered that I was travelling through a process where an image would come back not exactly as it had been before. My unconscious memory is alive.” Born on January 14, 1939 in Philadelphia, PA, she attended two art schools in her hometown before receiving her BFA from the Tyler School of Art. In 1965, the artist received her MFA from the University of Illinois in Champaign and later moved to New York where she became active in political protests and the feminist movement. Interested in wrestling elements of Abstract Expressionism away from the male machismo that dominated its history, Fishman began making paintings at a time when many others in her circle were not. The artist continues to live and work in New York, NY. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, among others.