Canadian-born Denver artist Ian Fisher has an interesting strategy for picture-making: Create photo-realist paintings of the sky unmoored from the landscape. For Critical Focus: Ian Fisher — which is still open — MCA curator Nora Burnett Abrams took an in-depth look at the artist's recent cloud paintings. Despite Fisher's careful realism, there's an undeniable abstract quality to the compositions, and at times they seem to almost melt into color-field territory. Though each depicts the same subject, every canvas is different and has its own unique palette — just like the clouds.