Maria Fisher was born in Svendborg, Denmark into the Nielsen family and grew up primarily on the east coast of the United States. She studied and interned in Paris as a teenager, and spent a year of collegiate studies in Copenhagen focusing on architecture. Her later travels included a sponsored trip to Kenya to research the success of a grassroots organization at work in Nairobi and the Kikuyu dominated countryside. At 25, Maria moved to the island of St. Vincent in the West Indies. She made record of the current cultural norms while teaching about modern AIDS prevention. After eight months, she moved to Blantyre, Malawi in southeastern Africa for three months. Upon her return stateside, she relocated to Manhattan and began her graduate work.

      Maria Fisher received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2006, specializing in extensive studies of human anatomy and figure paintings in oil. Her graduate work included a trip to Tuscany, where she studied landscape painting en plein air. The majority of Fisher’s work now focuses on commissioned portraits and animals in nature as its mainstay. She also incorporates pattern and silhouette into her colorful realist paintings and drawings.

      In the past few years, Fisher has won numerous first place prizes in juried shows while exhibiting in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, London & Italy. Currently her work is being featured in “Draw”, an international traveling show that premiered in New York City and then moved on to Austin, San Francisco, abroad to a museum in Mexico and is slated to go to Tokyo next. She currently shows her studio by appointment only, and sells her work at the finest juried events in and around the Oregon Coast.

To order one of your very own, simply email Maria at: maria@givenbackbirdhouses.com. Custom framing available upon request.