“A Lot To Do About Nothing”

2024 Art Exhibition by R. Michael Fisher

View Art Pieces

Curatorial Statement

R. Michael Fisher’s multi-media art exhibition may have “A Lot To Do About Nothing” but it also has a lot to do about keeping an artist-philosopher’s life in a syncopated groove. Fisher is a self-taught drummer who dances with self-learned visual art mediums and techniques. What he learns through playful and meditative practices of spontaneous creation-making he loves to teach and share. He has the gift of painting evocative compositions in high realism, that the commercial world of art loves to market and sell for grand prices, yet he has chosen to stay true to the spirit of a philosophical artist. A philosophical artist who desires heart-mind engagement with those who encounter his art. When the sacred triangle of connection forms, his teacher self appears. If you are so fortunate as be in the presence of Michael with his art, a conversation, filled with a wisdom gained over many decades of exploring the inner and outer realms of his being, begins to hold and carry you into new realms.

A conversation with Fisher is a dance filled with gestures and moves seeking the “right note,” as bassist Ron Carter described about his own music-making process. Colourful, rich and resonate notes are inspired by the co-encounter between the art, artist and audience. The viewer/listener is not passive in this dance, but moving in an unanticipated syncopated groove that remains in their inner eye and ears long after the dance has ended.

Barbara Bickel, August, 2024

Inventory List

Artist Statement

A LOT TO DO ABOUT NOTHING… is a solo exhibition of “new works” created as part of my daily meditations, although some are more planned pieces. These art pieces are aesthetically reflective musings of the Unconscious and my playfulness with poetics.

I often refer to my art as visual poems. They are typically short bursts of expression, although there is a disciplined and tedious element in the techniques. This can be seen in many of the textured markings (dashes, squares, dots) I have been using more in the last five years. At times, with these intensities of textured markings, I feel like I am sewing, crocheting or knitting. I like the experience of repetitive tediousness. At other times I like the explosive spontaneous combustions that appears with some pieces. Or I find objects and paste them down and work the piece more as a collage. Of late, the collaged pieces include a lot of autobiographical memory and are part of my art-based inquiry while writing a memoir.

The title of the exhibition came to me from a particular set of aesthetic exercises in the studio where I took a colored pencil crayon (or a limited set of 2, 3, or 4 colors) and I sat with a simple piece of white paper and let the pencil led start moving on the grain of the paper. I held the colored pencil crayon on its side so as to have a ‘rubbing’ effect rather than a drawing impression. This took me into discovering a great simplicity in doing ‘just about nothing’ to the white paper and composition—it all just unfolded and totally surprised me. Then a voice would emerge in my head “O.K. that’s enough, don’t do anything more.” Consequently, included in this show are few pieces that one might hardly call ‘art.’ These pieces seem more like controlled scribbles of a child playing with a new fancy tool of a colored pencil crayon and not knowing what they are doing. I like how this process make me forget I know what I am doing in the studio. For me this is when Magic happens.

R. Michael Fisher, August 2024