Eugene Fisk 1938 – 2018

Portraiture | Landscape | Life Drawing | Print
“Thank God for art! – A manifestation of the intangible”
Eugene Fisk 2017

Drawn to the work of the Fauvists for their colour harmonies, and the freedom and expressionism of artists such as Chaïm Soutine and Modigliani, Eugene developed a painting style that was bold and expressive yet showed great empathy to an individual character or the essence of a place.

Employing his unique understanding of the way colours react against each other, he enriched the everyday world around him, intensifying the smallest view into a vivid backdrop and the sedate sitter into a dramatic enigma.

In direct contrast to the vibrance of his painting was the minimalism of his extraordinary facility for drawing in ink with a continuous freehand line, yet despite their apparent simplicity of line, there is still the sense of the theatrical – the interpretation of the world as a stage set and the people as players.

“Where the need to draw and paint comes from, I have never discovered, only that, like many others, I couldn’t live without it….It is a life of response like a conversation. How strange and exceptional is a familiar view, there, but always changing. How mysterious is the person seated opposite to me or glimpsed in the street. Something must be done about it!”

OBITUARY Peter Wakelin | Wales Arts Review March 2018