BETH FISCHER

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Beth Fischer graduated with a BFA in painting from The Swain School of Design. She was particularly influenced by the art of the turn of the century impressionists and such artists as Chagall, Vlamink, Matisse, Roualt and Braque ­with their strong emphasis on color, light, and abstract shape. She learned that many of the artists she was drawn to had also worked in stained glass design and construction, but it wasn’t until she discovered the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, himself an accomplished painter, that she knew she’d found her medium. All the elements she strove for in her paintings translated to glass: vibrancy of color, line quality, and the breaking of images down into abstract shapes while often retaining a figurative quality. After graduation she apprenticed as a stained glass artist, concentrating on the copper foil technique developed by Tiffany and La Farge. Unlike the more traditional method of using lead came (or lead strips) usually associated with stained glass, copper foil allows for control of line quality, which is absolutely integral to her work. She selects glass with a painters eye, utilizing texture and shading, sometimes layering glass to achieve the desired color and light quality. She encounters similar challenges to those of an architect in that her work is commissioned for a specific space. It is often created for existing windows, and must integrate, inside and outside, light, shade, and color. It also calls for a close collaboration with her clients, in order to achieve an artistic, yet personal, piece of installation art glass.