By the early 1980s, Vernon Fisher was part of a loose group of artists who broke with abstract painting. He鈥檇 been painting abstract works himself in the 鈥�70s but, discouraged, he began playing with books and texts, scraps he found around his studio. One day, he was printing out words with an old
鈥淎nd I just saw a piece of a sandpaper out of the corner of my eye,鈥� Fisher says. 鈥淚 mean, it was like the light bulb, you know what I mean? It was classic. It was Archimedes jumping out of the bathtub 鈥� because those letters sanded through so clean and so sweet. I immediately knew I was going to leave abstract painting and I was going to make paintings with the text sanded through. And as soon as that idea happened, I just shut up shop and I went home. The emotion was just too heavy to keep working. 鈥�
Read about how the Fort Worth artist hooks his viewers with stories in museums from the Guggenheim to the Art Institute of Chicago . Learn about other North Texas artists in the .
