An artist paints music

OLGA LIVSHIN

“If not for my music, I don’t think I’d be painting today,” said Ava Lee Millman Fisher, an artist with a musical degree. Her solo exhibition I See Music opened in early May at the coffee shop Emelle’s.

Since she was a child, Millman Fisher has enjoyed both music and painting. She couldn’t decide which path to choose until she won a vocal scholarship at McGill University. She accepted her good fortune with gratitude and graduated from university as an opera singer. Afterwards, she performed operatic arias, Yiddish and Hebrew songs and taught music in her native Montreal and, later, in Vancouver.

One of her favorite classes was a class of special-needs children. Realizing that music was beneficial for people with mental illnesses, she went back to school to become a music therapist. And through it all, her devotion to painting didn’t waiver.

At first, it was just a hobby, secondary to music, just one more way to express herself. Later, when she started treating patients with severe mental illnesses, art had grown into a refuge from pain. “Music therapy can be taxing,” she explained. Exposure to her patients’ mental illnesses extracted its toll. To relieve the stress, she immersed herself in art, and it washed away the pain.

“Painting is very relaxing,” she said.

Over the years, visual art has become more than a relaxation technique. Now, all her creativity and love for the arts are being channeled into painting. “Sometimes, if an idea strikes me, I get up in the middle of the night to paint. I would never practise opera in the middle of the night,” she joked, emphasizing the importance of painting in her life.

She is attracted to the democracy of visual arts, to its all-encompassing acceptance. “Unlike music, in painting, there is no pure concept of right and wrong. In music, if you’re out of tune, you’re wrong. In visual arts, it’s a matter of like and dislike. There is much less rigidity.”

Despite her passion for painting, Millman Fisher considers her musical background a foundation of her art. “Training and discipline transfer from one art form to another,” she said.

Music is also the reason she selected watercolor as her primary medium. “Watercolors are closest to music. They express the flow and ebb of colors, like music.” The artist’s watercolors are her songs translated into another artistic language, the one where she uses brush strokes in place of musical notes.

She always listens to music when she paints and the melodies often inspire her images. “I see music and I hear painting,” she said. “It’s a form of synesthesia.” She most often names her pieces using musical terminology.

Free to paint what she likes, she fills her paintings with color and serenity. Her spirituality and cheerful disposition go into the images she creates. Contrary to many modern artistic trends that lean towards darkness, Millman Fisher’s gift aspires towards harmony and joy. Bright flowers run riot through her pictures and Judaic symbolism offers hope and understanding. And the people show their appreciation the only way they can – they buy her paintings. Her art sales have been healthy for some time.

One of the best examples of Millman Fisher’s flower theme, “Birch Rosalia,” is a springtime sonata, elegant and contemplative. Its pastel-blue tones chime with positivity, while the predominantly pink flowers dance among the birch trees like whimsical fairies. “I wanted to combine the strength of birch trees with the delicacy of flowers,” said the artist.

Another of her paintings, “Miracle and Melody,” resonates with Judaic leitmotifs, very strong in Millman Fisher’s art. Musical notation and Jewish symbols are incorporated into the image of a snow-bound forest. “This is a Chanukah painting,” she said with a smile. “The little chanukiyah lights up a cold winter scene.”

The centrepiece of the exhibition is an elaborate painting “Aria Ad Lib of A L,” which looks like a stained-glass mosaic panel; a window into the artist’s soul. “It is a story of my life and my family. It’s also the story of the Jewish people,” she said.

Filled with metaphors and complex, sophisticated imagery, the painting is a new direction for the artist, a direction she is planning to further explore.

Many will have a chance to see this painting – it has been chosen for the cover of the latest Vancouver Talmud Torah Greater Vancouver Jewish Community Telephone Directory. Carole

Fader, the editor of the directory, said of Millman Fisher: “Ava Lee offered to donate one of her paintings for our cover image. She said her first grandchild was entering Talmud Torah and she wanted to do something special. We selected this painting because it has so much depth in it; it reflects her beautiful personality. There is music and Torah and nature in it and it’s so very bright.”

The show runs at Emelle’s, 177 West 7th Ave., until July 2. For information or to view more of the artist’s work, visit creatavalee.net.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She is available for contract work. Contact her at [email protected].

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