Art Brokerage: American artist Louise Fishman (b. 1939)- Louise Fishman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is recognized as one of the best known American abstract painters of her generation. Her painting style at first gave her some trouble in being recognized. She exhibited only occasionally in the 1960s, a period in her life when she produced primarily grid based work. During the later 1970s her abstract work was linked with Pattern painting and she became one of America’s most exciting young painters. Large scale works like Grand Slam (1985) and Cinnabar and Malachite (1986) reflected her bold visions, and caused many reviewers to label her work as having elements of Neo Expressionism. As the feminist movement gained strength in the 1970s, Fishman abandoned her Minimalist-inspired, grid-like paintings and began making work that reflected women’s traditional tasks. These pieces required the sort of repetitive steps that characterize activities like knitting, piecing, or stitching. Returning later to the masculine realm of abstract painting, Fishman still sought a way to distinguish what she was doing from the work of male artists, both historic and contemporary. The resulting compositions combine gestural brushwork with an orderly structure: it is as if Fishman built or wove—her paintings, starting from a foundation and carefully adding to them, layer upon interlocking layer.