About

Kirsten Fischler has developed a unique style of art making that incorporates recycled building materials in such a way the leftover mundane is transformed into rustic refinement. She has been working with reclaimed wood and mixed media since 1993.

Her work explores the tension between organic shapes and geometric forms made from manufactured wood products. She deconstructs and then reconstructs her imagery to mimic the pseudo-recycling of a culture that discards nature at its own expense. Her painting process is visceral, spiritual and intuitive as she attempts to honor the trees that once supplied oxygen, food, tools, and shelter.

Her work is in corporate offices in the Philadelphia area and in private collections domestically and abroad. She has taught at Moore College of Art and Design as well as Delaware College of Art and Design. Fischler's work appears in the book 100 Artists of the Brandywine Valley by Catherine Quillman. She now lives and creates art in the historic town of Salem, MA.

 Education

MFA Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY

BFA Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI

Statement

I create: I destroy: I recreate.

My art represents the circle of life. I often reuse the plywood I find discarded as well as recycle my own artwork within each piece. I choose discarded wood byproducts as my medium because it is available, it has physical presence, and it was once alive. I follow the patterns molded into the life of the species by water and other natural elements. Some of the patterns are man made. They act as an archive of the times. The physicality, the thickness, the roughness, and chromatophoric color schemes are my visceral, frustrated response to living in a computer-based society.