Artwork copyright Peggy Hitchcock. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2017.

Artwork copyright Peggy Hitchcock. Photo courtesy of the artist.

By Gifts of Fish, 1998

Peggy Hitchcock
American (born 1951)

Location: Sequim High School, Sequim

About the Artwork

By Gifts of Fish is part of artist Peggy Hitchcock's series of enamel artworks depicting fish imagery. She made the rectangular and triangular panels using screen prints based on photocopies from books, magazines, and other media. These are organized and assembled featuring varied but also connected imagery into what she terms a "constellation." The fish images were originally engraved on a copperplate two hundred years ago. Hitchcock used a computer to print them on copper foil. She likes “this marriage of old and new, age old materials and modern tools.” The fish screens are some of Hitchcock’s favorites and she uses them repeatedly in multiple artworks. Hitchcock explains, “I silk-screen both liquid and dry enamel on to copper foil which is then fired at 1500 degrees Fahrenheit in a kiln… I have boxes of enameled copper ready to be used for composing a piece. I’m like a quilter using fabric scraps, only mine are very thin glass and copper that can be folded and cut with a paper cutter.”

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Sequim School District.

About the Artist

Northwest artist Peggy Hitchcock creates paintings and wall sculptures that explore pattern and form. In most of her artworks, she uses silkscreened and photocopied images based on books, magazines, and other media. She has a library of hundreds of screens that reference history, decorative patterns, the natural world, and much more. Hitchcock explains that part of the beauty of art is that it is "language for our eyes." She grew up in Ohio and has lived and worked in Seattle since the early 1980s.