Disney Limited Edition: Wicked Darkness
DISNEY TREASURES COLLECTION: WICKED DARKNESS
Stephen Fishwick
MEDIUM: Hand-Embellished Giclée on Canvas
SIZE: 30" x 12"
EDITION SIZE: 95
ARTIST: Stephen Fishwick
SKU: DFA-LE-WICKEDDARKNESS
ABOUT THE IMAGE: Inspired by the 1940 film Fantasia featuring Mickey the sorcerer casting a spell to fight the dark evil forces.
ABOUT THE MEDIUM: Limited edition prints are reproductions of an original piece of artwork. We offer giclée prints on canvas, which are museum-quality prints that last upwards of 100 years. Giclée printing is a process that uses fade-resistant, archival inks and archival substrates to print on large format printers. The run of prints is capped at a specific number. Limited edition prints can be more valuable to art collectors than prints without a restricted number of copies because of the rarity of the prints. Each piece is hand-numbered and embellished by the artist. Each piece also includes a Certificate of Authenticity.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Stephen Fishwick’s photo may not be found in Webster’s under the listing for “art,” but it should be because no other artist combines the elements they describe – sound, color, movement – that affect the aesthetic sense the way he does.
However, once his mother explained to him the perils of life as a starving artist, he simply declared, “Then I guess I’ll just be Spider-Man.” After the likelihood of that reality settled in, Stephen returned his heart to art and took his first formal painting class at age ten. It was in high school that his art first earned him accolades. With the persistence of his high school art teacher, he enrolled at the Art Institute of Pittsburg. Less than a year later, he started working as a professional artist, drawing portraits, caricatures and illustrations.
In 1996, Stephen began expanding his artistic education by studying traditional drawing and painting under Jeff Watts at the Watts Atelier of the Arts in Southern California. Influenced by a wide range of renowned painters, from Norman Rockwell to Salvador Dali, John Singer Sargent to J.C. Leyendecker, Stephen has created a style all his own. “Every day I fall in love with drawing the human face and form,” he says. “My sketchbooks are filled with drawings of life, from people to animals.”
In a career that has spanned over two decades, Stephen has earned widespread acclaim, but two achievements make him most proud: First, his philanthropic endeavors have raised over $1 million for different charities just since 2004. Second, Stephen is excited to become an official artist of Disney Fine Art, an honor that will allow him to paint Disney characters and bring his artwork to leagues of Disney fans around the world.
ABOUT THE FILM: Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. With story direction by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer and production supervision by Ben Sharpsteen, it is the third Disney animated feature film. The film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Music critic and composer Deems Taylor acts as the film's Master of Ceremonies, providing a live-action introduction to each animated segment.
Disney settled on the film's concept in 1938 as work neared completion on The Sorcerer's Apprentice, an elaborate Silly Symphonies short designed as a comeback role for Mickey Mouse, who had declined in popularity. As production costs grew higher than what it could earn, Disney decided to include the short in a feature-length film with other segments set to classical pieces. The soundtrack was recorded using multiple audio channels and reproduced with Fantasound, a pioneering sound reproduction system that made Fantasia the first commercial film shown in stereophonic sound.
