Fishman's painting style at first gave her some trouble in being recognized. She exhibited only occasionally in the 1960s, a period in her life when she produced primarily grid-based work. During the later 1970s her abstract work was linked with Pattern painting. Large scale works like Grand Slam and Cinnabar and Malachite reflected her bold visions, and caused many reviewers to label her work as having elements of neo-expressionism. In 1980 she was one of the ten invited artists whose work was exhibited in the main event of the Great American Lesbian Art Show. As the feminist movement gained strength in the 1970s, Fishman abandoned her minimalist-inspired, grid-like paintings and began making work that reflected women's traditional tasks. These pieces required the sort of repetitive steps that characterize activities like knitting, piecing, or stitching. Returning later to the masculine realm of abstract painting, Fishman still sought a way to distinguish what she was doing from the work of male artists, both historic and contemporary. The resulting compositions combine gestural brushwork with an orderly structure: it is as if Fishman built or wove—her paintings, starting from a foundation and carefully adding to them, layer upon interlocking layer. In 1988, Fishman accompanied a friend who survived the Holocaust at both Auschwitz and Terezin. This trip was part of a larger one that took her to Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest. This trip had a dramatic impact on her life as an artist, altered her way of working, and helped her to "investigate her Jewish identity." She returned with ashes, cremated human remains – from Auschwitz. She mixed the ashes with beeswax to use in her paints for the series Remembrance and Renewal. These paintings served as abstract art as well as memorials to a tragic and obscene event in history. In the early 1990s she returned to painting grids in a slightly altered format. This can be seen in works such as Sipapu and Shadows and Traces The organization of Fishman's work derives ultimately from the grid, which was key 35 years ago, is vestigially apparent though less and less important. Some of the mark-making in the current paintings inclines toward writing, as has been true for around a decade. In the fall of 2011, Fishman completed her residency at the Emile Harvey Foundation in Venice. She cites her residency in Venice as an important influence on her most recent work. Likewise, the work of Venetian artist Titian has been of chief inspiration during this recent period of her work.
Awards
Senior Art Prize, Tyler School –1963
Change, Inc. Award –1975
National Endowment for the Arts Grant – 1975, 1983, 1994
Guggenheim Fellowship – 1979
CAPS Fellowship – 1981
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship – 1986
Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant – 1986
National Endowment for the Arts, Painting - 1994
Adolph & Clara Obrig Prize for Painting, National Academy of Design, 177th Annual Exhibition, 5/1st -2002
