SUSAN HOFFMAN FISHMAN

Susan Hoffman Fishman is a mixed-media painter, environmental artist and arts writer who has exhibited widely throughout the United States, including at the William Benton Museum, University of Connecticut (Storrs, CT); New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain, CT); Stand4 Gallery, (Brooklyn, NY); Alternative Museum (NYC); New York Hall of Science (Bronx, NY); Yale University (New Haven, CT; National Aquarium (Baltimore, Md); Nurture/Nature Center (Easton, PA), and numerous others.

Since 2011, all of Fishman’s work has addressed water in the context of climate change. She is especially interested in the contrast between the horrifying destruction happening around and in our rivers, lakes and oceans and the magnificent beauty of that destruction. Her recent work recasts ancient myths - in which water plays a pivotal role - into visual narratives that reflect upon contemporary society.

In 2021, Fishman’s desire to collaborate with scientists led her to participate in a three-month artist’s residency at Planet Labs, an international company based in San Francisco, CA providing daily global satellite images to NASA, universities and researchers. At Planet, she studied the thousands of sinkholes that have developed around the Dead Sea in Israel and Jordan as well as in Siberia and other countries around the world, all of which are the result of climate change, extraction and other related factors. Working with a Planet geologist, Fishman interpreted scientific data about this growing environmental and geological crisis through an artist’s lens.

Informed by the Planet Labs Residency, Fishman’s current work incorporates satellite images of bodies of water that have been severely impacted by climate change, causing increasing levels of desertification. The materials and processes she uses include acylic, oil pigment, collage, cyanotype, mono-printing and mixed-media.

Articles, interviews and reviews of Fishman’s work have appeared in Burning Worlds: Climate Change in Art & Literature, a publication of the Chicago Review of Books; The Washington Post, Art Spiel, Sci/Art Magazine, The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, The Hartford Courant, Artists and Climate Change and numerous others.

In addition to her art practice, Fishman writes regularly on topics related to the climate crisis. From 2017 - 2022, she wrote a monthly column called “Imagining Water,” for the international blog, Artists and Climate Change, which highlighted artists of all disciplines around the world who are working on global water issues and climate change, and is a contributor to Art Spiel, an on-line publication that addresses the work of contemporary artists. Her most recent article (March, 2024) appears in Image Journal.