Whatever They Do, It’S Bound To Be Creative

Jay and Marilyn Fisher never recovered from the bug that bit them when they were children half a century ago.

That bug has influenced everything in their lives - even their 27-year marriage.

“We’re quite different, but we’re compatible because we’re both artists,” Jay says, taking a moment from the mural he’s painting in Coeur d’Alene’s new Jaymar Gallery to hug his wife.

“We need to express ourselves and move in different directions,” Marilyn says, passing paintings of vibrant tigers, shimmery sunsets and soulful countenances on her way to the gallery’s back rooms.

Creativity found a home in these two. So far, they’ve drawn and painted, designed rooms, houses and furniture, written books, poems and songs, cooked dishes that satisfy the eye as well as the palate and created a line of award-winning instant seasonings and sauces.

“We have new ideas all the time,” Marilyn says, as if their industriousness needs explaining.

Both found art as children. Marilyn traveled with her salesman father and drew to forestall boredom. Jay drew portraits at family gatherings.

Drawing evolved into painting and art studies. But Jay, who grew up in Iowa, and Marilyn, who grew up in California, each discovered that art wasn’t a good source of income.

Jay turned to singing with his two brothers. The “Boys Next Door,” his rock ‘n’ roll trio, appeared on the Arthur Godfrey Show and had a short-term record contract in the 1950s.

One brother quit to sell real estate, so the other two put together a Rowan-and-Martin-type comedy routine. They toured the country in a trailer, painting by day and performing in dives at night.

After the act folded, Jay headed to Hawaii where he sold his paintings in a marketplace near Waikiki and did street corner tourist portraits.

In 1970, life dropped him in Southern California where Marilyn was working as an interior designer. Together they designed the inside of homes for Hollywood’s elite, often creating new furniture as part of the project.

They painted scenes on armoire doors and floral designs on walls and cupboards.

“It’s all art,” Jay says.

But it wasn’t the art they wanted to do. They returned to painting, in Hawaii then in Reno. Jay worked on any flat surface with acrylics, oils, watercolors, ink, pencils, felt.

He used a palette knife to layer his paint, adding texture and depth to his jungle and city scenes.

Marilyn painted landscapes, seascapes and portraits in watercolors, and furniture in indestructible acrylics. Then, a friend who had tasted Marilyn’s cooking invited her to open a restaurant in his new mall. She accepted.

“I always knew how to cook,” Marilyn says. “I learned by osmosis because I did my homework in the kitchen while my mother cooked.”

She opened a crepe house and catering business, built it into a success, sold it three years later and moved back to California.

She planned to open another restaurant, but she and Jay were called to Hawaii to design and build a 7,000-square-foot house for Jay’s brother, the founder of Century 21 Realty.

When the Fishers returned to California, Marilyn opened her restaurant, a catering business and a cooking school. She and Jay used their talents to design the popular restaurant’s interior.

“She did all the omelettes,” Jay says. “On weekends, she’d do 300 a day. There’d be six burners going at once.”

They sold the business to open a fancy dinner house.

“We like to create things, do them and sell so we can do new ideas,” Marilyn says.

While Marilyn taught students to poach salmon, Jay painted and wrote. He finished a book of poetry and 900 pages of a novel Marilyn calls the white “Roots.”

He also wrote and illustrated a storybook for older children about the ordeals faced by a flock of ducks migrating south. The book includes 29 of his ink drawings. He hasn’t found a publisher yet.

Just before moving to Coeur d’Alene to be near family last December, Marilyn launched a line of dry seasoning blends and one bottled table sauce for meats.

Her Chimichurri sauce, with a blend of garlic, chili peppers, vinegar and olive oil, was chosen the most unusual entry in the 1998 National Fiery Food Challenge.

Neither Jay nor Marilyn is sure what form their creativity will take in Coeur d’Alene. They want to manufacture Marilyn’s sauce. They’re both painting and Marilyn is cooking, this time for a nursing home.

“I’m in a nice position to help seniors, cook their food and get it out to them as attractively as possible,” she says. “I really like it. It’s another learning experience.”