Louise Fishman grew up in Havertown and West Oak Lane, and lived in Center City as a young person, but now she’s associated more with producing abstract canvases in Manhatten, writes Edith Newhall for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The work of the 80-year-old artist has had only rare appearances in the Philadelphia region since her first solo show in 1964 at the Philadelphia Art Alliance.

So it’s a happy surprise to learn, in the catalog for My City, Fishman’s first solo show at a commercial gallery here, that her art was always informed by her time in Philadelphia — and continues to be. The show runs through Oct. 19 at Locks Gallery, 6oo Washington Square South.

You won’t find any overt references to Philadelphia in Fishman’s recent paintings.

But knowing of her early life here, you might detect in her painting As Is a nod to Piet Mondrian, whose grid-based paintings Fishman saw for the first time while visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

And could her Träumerei, with its vertical, gash-like strokes of red, owe something to Chaim Soutine, whose brutal, lushly rendered Flayed Rabbit she undoubtedly encountered at the Barnes?

Read more about this local artist here.

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