Ava Lee Millman Fisher - Artist | Painter | Vancouver BC Canada

Highlighting ROAM Gallery Artist

Ava Lee Millman Fisher
(Painter & Mixed Media Artist)

I create because I must! From as far back as I can recall, this has been, and always will be, a journey that encompasses not only my many years of involvement in the visual arts, but also my numerous years of training, disciple, and experience as a musician in general, and a classically-trained soprano in particular. I believe my “visual voice” is embedded and embodied within my paintings. From a very early age, my training in the realm of music allowed for the development of a keen ear (which shortly thereafter became a keen eye) in the areas of concept, of proportion, of colour, and of symmetry.

Watercolours, acrylics, encaustics, and mixed media are my milieu of choice. It is within these media that I am best able to express the ebb and flow of music. Within these confines, I delight in interpreting the melding of harmonies, the major and minor keys, the interweaving of vocal and instrumental lines, the high and low ranges from soprano coloratura to basso profundo ... and every range, timbre, and colour in between.

Far more often than not, as I create and paint, I glean great inspiration from listening to a vast variety of classical music, or to that from the enormous and varied repertoire of Jewish music. Synaesthesia is at play, for I am able to “hear” colour and to “see” sound. I interpret my visual works in musical terminology ... a little less legato here; a bit more forte there. Many of my works are nuanced with titles that embrace musical terminology and/or imagery. These titles are usually evoked during a stage in the creative process wherein I am able to discern the evolving timbre and tonality.

As a Jewish artist, I attempt to bring all that I am, and all that I know, to my work. Although I delight in creating both Judaic and secular works, I believe that every painting is imbued with “radical amazement” (in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel) at G-d’s awesome and amazing visual world. I attempt to translate and transfer the wonder of these bounties into my personal statement of colour, tone, and shape. I find the act of creating to be extraordinarily spiritual by its very nature. I am transported both in time and space. And yet, to borrow from Joyce Kilmer, I am keenly aware that, “Poems are made by fools like me. But only G-d can make a tree.”