Jeffrey Fitzgerald

“Lavender Sand and Greedy Gulls”
March 12 - April 12

Blue green ocean, a blue green ocean from every angle, and emotion; I build. The paintings, all my work comes from the process and the subject finding a balance. From graphite dust on a surface to pigment's weight across the canvas, the painting is coupled to a place. I am often seaweed being pushed onto sand, the twain is my story.

I grew up in a city full of immigration’s glory, brimming with reciting and standing straight in line, a world of conformity and uniform- this was slipping away. Seemingly, color was being released, “Wonder Years” into/unto Jeff’s imagination. A life on newsprint paper, from superheroes in comic books, a secret cave where I constructed compositions and costumes. Batman’s cape and cowl against an endless Gotham City was my zenith. 

I grew up in a rocky coastal town with a beach of blissful tumult. A list of characters and props etched in my memory, weeks of carefree, days of sun where tidal change was an interruption. I felt the fog horn.

Art school was a catapult, absolutely the opposite of high school. I attended a Roman Catholic high school that had zero art classes. My portfolio was watercolors of covered bridges and pen and inks of costumed vigilantes. Upon finishing the first semester, as always and never before, life was turned on end. Art History and Abstract Expressionism stepped forward, with a indulgent event, I occupy that grand and immediate space. Found space and four walls as a respite, I found a slowly swirling never still peace, working in the studio, painting through the U Mass, Amherst.

Then we lived in the city, NYC, the city forever, we covered SoHo, the Metropolitan, the Arts Students League and Neo-Abstract Expressionism. There are lots of big drawings from a small and expansive sublet studio. Donna and I devoured and just barely tread Manhattan’s everyday expenses. Alive and alive, passion and love bring/ brought multiple jobs and tiny bank accounts.

Back to Maine, I dive into rocky inlets busied with mollusks. I engage frothy tantalizing Baroque ringlets of kelp and sweeping behemoths, emboldened by bitter and chiseled horizon lines. The paintings are explorations and answers. Color is narrative, color is research and a box to save a story.  Dialogue ensuing, a story I have just started and build upon. The next series of paintings will make me relaxed and wise as always. As always, the tide is no longer slack, now sandbars and fields of lavender sand appear, roamed by greedy gulls, I needfully return.