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Louise Fishman
Louise Fishman Special Edition
Texts by Debra Singer, Josephine Halvorson, Suzan Frecon, Aruna D’Souza, Andrew Suggs, Bertha Harris, John Yau, and Louise Fishman
Karma, New York, 2020
544 pages, hardcover
7 1⁄2 × 9 1⁄4 inches
Edition of 50
Signed and numbered with unique, hand-painted cover
“If good painting is what you want to do, then good painting is what you must look at,” New York–based painter Louise Fishman (born 1939) wrote in a 1977 issue of Heresies. “Take what you want and leave the dreck.” Fishman is renowned for her subtractive method of mark-making, which celebrates process and rejects the masculinist impulses of abstract expressionism. She uses scrapers, trowels and traditional brushes to apply and remove dense layers of paint in loose, gestural scores across the canvas. Fishman’s training as a sculptor is visible in the physicality of her paint, which is vigorously applied, indexing her movement about the canvas.