Andrew Fish

Originally from VT, I studied at the Governors Institute on the Arts and later became a Resident Assistant. I attended Art History classes at Middlebury College before moving to New York City in 1990 and enrolling in the School of Visual Arts. I was an artist assistant to Clarissa Sligh and Carole Byard in NYC and worked as an art handler and administrative assistant in several galleries throughout SoHo and TriBeCa. I curated a few shows in New York as well as in Hanoi, Vietnam where I lived for a year. I am now living and working in Cambridge MA.

Inspirations for my artwork come from my life experiences. I take visual cues from many of my favorite artists and favor concepts that invoke a complimentary balance between the process of making art, the materials used, and insightful narratives based on intellectual ideas. I can appreciate pure aesthetics as well as work that is all concept and little craftsmanship, however it is work that blends these two sensibilities that inspires me most. Sam Taylor Wood has been a favorite of mine since I saw her piece Brontosaurus at the Tate Modern in London in 1999. And the installation D Untitled by Rirkrit Tiravanija inspired me to pursue multi-media musical performance for several years in New York. Most recently the work of Wade Guyton has helped me find a kinship in the exploration of inkjet printer-based pictures. Many other artists have left indelible impressions on my creative psyche, including Modigliani, deKooning, Kline, Rothko, Agnes Martin, Anselm Keifer, Richard Kern and Gerhard Richter to name a few.

My paintings are snapshots of our time. I rely on the spirit of spontaneity to capture a moment in time, and then use several processes to complete a depiction of this moment.

For me, “artwork of our time” has to involve digital technology, since this kind of technology has become a standard and a staple in our everyday lives. Remnants of technology through the imagery of digital artifact have become a main theme in my paintings. Combining the organic elements of painting with the digital accompaniment of inkjet printing has become my preferred method of carrying out this theme.

My paintings are also process-oriented. Each stage in creating one of my paintings involves it’s own set of procedures and outcome, leaving ample space for the materials to direct the painting. I use hand-made papers for inkjet prints that are often reduced to pulp, spread across the canvas as a medium equivalent to paint, but always maintain signs of their digital print.