Rooms With A View

At Home with Ethel Fisher

It’s hard to know where to look when visiting artist Ethel Fisher’s home. The views, both inside and out, are compelling. A spectacular panorama of Pacific Palisades and the ocean beckons from virtually every room in Fisher’s 1926 Spanish Colonial house. But it’s the objects on the walls’and the touch of magic created everywhere in between’that finally grab the spotlight. ”Fisher’s large-scale oil paintings’ranging from edgy, hyperrealistic portraits to lush, ethereal landscapes’dominate the interior. Yet evidence of her artistic hand appears all around, with inspired vignettes displaying everything from a 17th-century Greek icon painting to exotic masks from India and Africa, to an Old Master drawing (remarkably unearthed at a garage sale) to other great flea market and estate-sale finds. Niches filled with spindles and other found objects arranged in a way reminiscent of a Joseph Cornell box flank the front door. ”Fisher and her husband, Seymour Kott, a historian and art scholar, have lived in this landmark residence perched on a hillside just above the Alphabet Streets for nearly 40 years. During this time, Fisher’s stylish eye hasn’t gone unnoticed. In the 1970s, feature stories ran in the Home section of the Los Angeles Times and other publications marveling at her unconventional treatment’stark white walls with eclectic, mostly modern furnishings’of an old Spanish interior. ”Ultimately, the true jewel within is Fisher herself, who exudes quiet dignity and playful charm in almost equal measure. The sparkle in her eyes tells of an engagement in life that is unwilted. At 83, she approaches her art with much the same seriousness she has over six decades, working many hours daily in her light-filled studio tucked in a corner of the house’s second story. ”Dating back to the late 1950s, her curriculum vitae boasts a variety of solo shows in such far-reaching locales as Havana, West Palm Beach, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles. Most recently, she participated in a three-person show at the University of Judaism, and before that her work was included in the 2000 ‘Revealing and Concealing: Portraits and Identity’ exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center. ”Growth and change mark her artistic path. Early on, her work was abstract, but gradually it shifted to a more representational and figurative style that continues to this day. Throughout the 1970s, she was preoccupied with precise renderings of early 20th-century architectural facades. Later, photo montage became her focus, then portraiture, landscape and still life. ”’I’m interested in figures; I feel mine have a certain psychological depth,’ Fisher says of her portrait work. ‘I think it’s the biggest challenge in art, much more than abstract painting. And I only do paintings of people I know.’ ”A series of newly finished still-life paintings hangs in her studio. ‘I went back to still life mainly because I didn’t have any models,’ Fisher says with a note of wistfulness. ‘Everyone’s either gone or dead.’ ”Each of the new still lifes has at its center a wooden box which, according to Fisher, serves as a ‘stabilizer’ with tension created by objects appearing behind and in front of it. ‘I wanted to work with strong, simple forms as well as a new color palette,’ says Fisher, who cites the famous David painting ‘Death of Marat’ as the springboard for this work. She adds with a sly smile: ‘I’m trying to achieve a mood that is something between menace and melancholy.’ ”Born in Galveston, Texas, Fisher studied art at the University of Houston, the University of Texas and Washington University in St. Louis, before making the trek to New York in the 1940s, where she attended The Art Students League on scholarship. Though she left New York and moved to Miami for a time (this is where her two daughters from a first marriage were born), she frequently visited New York throughout the 1950s and returned to live there in the 1960s, maintaining two studios. Her westward journey, prompted by a desire for a less frenetic environment, came about in 1970 when she married Seymour Kott and they settled in the Palisades. ”Fisher brightens when recalling the heady days she spent immersed in the New York art scene, with people like Man Ray, Larry Rivers, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist among her acquaintances. The most significant connection, however, was with Wil Barnet, the prominent American artist who was her teacher at the Art Students League. The friendship continues to this day. ”’He was the one who really set standards for great art,’ Fisher says of her past teacher and friend. ‘He opened eyes and minds to really look at paintings and understand what was happening.’ ”Barnet was influential in getting Fisher’s work into many group shows in New York. She eventually had a solo show at The Angeleski Gallery [now defunct] in 1960. ”’I remember going to a major New York gallery where the owner told me he’d show my work if I painted more like the Abstract Expressionists,’ Fisher says. ‘I got huffy and walked out. At that time, my work was abstract, but more lyrically constructed and free on the surface.’ ”Another door closed at a top gallery when the dealer learned she was female. ‘He simply didn’t show women artists,’ says Fisher, who nonetheless credits her own initiative and the support of fellow artists and friends for allowing her to enjoy a certain amount of success. ‘In the ’50s and ’60s, women helped each other out. You didn’t need to belong to a women’s movement in order to do this.’ ”A tour of Fisher’s home and art is also a journey through her life. A recurrent theme is the loss of her beloved daughter, Sandra, who died in 1994 of an aneurysm at 47. An accomplished artist herself, Sandra was married to R.B. Kitaj, one of the key figures in the British Pop Art movement. Their son, Max, Fisher’s grandson, is a budding journalist now living in Israel. ”’I’m a tough lady,’ says Fisher of how she copes with her grief. ‘You just survive.’ Her younger daughter, Margaret Fisher, is a writer who lives with her husband in Northern California. ”A small collection of Fisher’s landscape paintings, many depicting vistas of Pacific Palisades and Southern California, are now on view at Gift Garden Antiques. Zeroing in on this genre came about as a dare. ‘Some one once said to me ‘You probably couldn’t do landscapes because you really don’t like to go out and be in nature that much, ” Fisher recalls with a chuckle while seated in her studio. ‘Well, I fooled that person because, as you can see, I did a lot of nice landscapes.’ Gift Garden Antiques is located at 15266 Antioch St. in Pacific Palisades. Contact: (310) 459-4114.