My current paintings use clothing pattern schematics as both inspiration and armature to play with abstract painting techniques and narration. While my primary concern is making the paintings work visually, the resulting narrative (more or less obvious depending on the painting) comes from my roots in Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. My grandmother and great-aunts made quilts, lace, and their own clothes. Scraps are all they had but they made something beautiful from them. Pattern schematics, literally covering the physical body and made by the hands of women, are the perfect armature to explore the fragments and layering of our personal histories.
I work instinctively and experimentally and allow the process to dictate direction and meaning. I title the paintings to help the viewer find their way through their own interpretations. My titles often use words that have double meanings such as in the painting “Stitch”. The title suggests the obvious sewing definition of the word but the painting, formally, suggests emotional or physical harm to women depicted with the dagger shapes and the reference to a metal saw blade. Finding a way to coalesce the clumsiness of pushing paint to beauty and meaning will never get old to me.
Fichtner received her B.F.A from Rhode Island School of Design and Tyler School of Art and her M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University. Over the past 30 years her work has been included in shows in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York City. She currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA.
