Jack Fitzgerald
I was born in 1977 in Plumstead, South East London and am currently living in Canterbury, Kent. My work essentially explores themes of belonging, change, social history and the emotional ties we have to landscapes. Since leaving school I have combined my artistic work with first studying and now teaching music. My first exhibition shortly after school was with the Royal Society of Marine Artists at the Mall Galleries. Since then I have exhibited with Daler Rowney, Beside The Wave Gallery in Falmouth, Conquest House in Canterbury, Taller Galleria Fort in Cadaques, Fundacio Tharrats d'Art Grafic in Barcelona and L'Etang D'Art in Bages, France. I am now principally interested in exhibiting my paintings with private galleries. All work included on this website is for sale either framed or unframed. The dimensions listed are all in centimeters, further details are available via the e-mail listed in the contact page.
Paintings
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My paintings are all either watercolours, or oil paintings that exploit the traditional watercolourist's technique of building up an image via the layering of washes of colour with initially high levels of medium that become more saturated with pigment as the painting develops. As part of this approach I tend to avoid any form of preliminary drawing onto the surface, preferring to respond more intuitively to the various surfaces I use to help define the character and meaning of the piece.
These surfaces can be traditional papers and canvases but are frequently more unusual. I often use industrial OSB Board for its interesting surface textures and because its more common application in boarding up derelict buildings chimes with the often urban landscapes I choose to depict. At times boards taken from or near the location of the painting have been used. These have included driftwood and boards used by builders to mix cement.
In many cases my paintings incorporate elements of mixed media to provoke associations between the landscapes and the social histories they evoke. In one depiction of the river, viewed from Woolwich Arsenal, brillo pads and red foundry sand are used to refer to my Grandmother and Grandfather who worked as a cleaner and foundry foreman close to this stretch of the river. In Gravesend Looking East ground turmeric powder is used to depict the sand bank; but also as a tribute to the town's well established Sikh community and the central role cooking plays within that religion. In all cases where mixed media is used my intention is to add layers of meaning to the artwork and, although a full list of the (often oblique) reference of these additions is not appropriate here I am very happy to expand further via private correspondence.
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Printmaking
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My prints are usually made after I have depicted a scene through painting or drawing and are therefore both a commentary on the place depicted and on my original artistic response. At present I have been drawn to using techniques rooted in engraving and etching as these seem best at providing a freedom to create through instinctive mark making, close to the approach I take with my paintings.
For those works listed as engravings I use a combination of traditional tools combined with a Dremel electric hand tool to engrave, score, bore and cut through pieces of perspex that are then inked up and fed through the press. When deeper marks are made on the perspex this leads to the paper becoming embossed, a smaller scale reference to the almost three dimensional nature of my paintings.
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When a work is listed as an etching it will have been produced using aluminium plates. The self aqua-tinting nature of this metal and its suitability for home etching allows me considerable creative freedom. A technique I frequently use is to take rubbings of surface textures from the scene using soft ground and to then apply these to the plate using an iron on a very low heat setting. By so doing I am able to establish a physical link between the place which inspired the work and the eventual image. A rubbing is taken. It is then rubbed onto aluminium and etched. This etched plate is then inked and fed through a press where it makes a physical connection with the paper that carries the resulting image. If you look closely at the etchings included here certain simplistic imagery may become apparent. In the case of my depictions of religious buildings (Secret Garden and Canterbury Cathedral) these images derive from rubbings of masons' marks left in the stone. transfigured for new expressive ends.
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