Christopher Fitzgerald Austin Artist

<body>  <p><h1>An Austin artist with Hungarian and Irish roots, Christopher Fitzgerald hails from Washington State.</h1></p> <img src="images/contemporary-painter.jpg" alt="Christopher Fitzgerald Austin Artist"> <p>Born in 1977, he graduated from Western Washington University in 1999. He spent the summer of 1999 in Italy and France studying art after his college education, and returned to Seattle where he first began exhibiting his paintings. His first solo show in the fall of 2000 completely sold out as an Austin artist. Christopher Fitzgerald magnified representational paintings of very small paint formations led to his current work comprised of panels exhibiting copious applications of paint. His paintings reflect elements of abstract Expressionism and Minimalism fused with more contemporary thinking. Austin Artist Chronicle visual arts writer Rachel Koper listed him as one of her “favorite individual artists of 2004” [1] and one of her “favorite artists by body of work in 2005.”[2] Shortlisted for Austin Museum of Art's 22-To-Watch 2005 exhibition and the Arthouse Texas Prize in 2006, this American Christopher Fitzgerald painter’s work is steadily maturing.</p> <p><h1>If you have not experienced the paintings of Austin artist Christopher Fitzgerald</h1></p> <p>Imagine rich epic vistas of paint-landscapes with a Tolkien mythical magnificence about them. His paintings, also referred to as “paint-scapes”, explore the terrain of paint as landscape. Upon visiting the his Austin artist studio I was pleasantly surprised to find that the idea began with extremely small, thickly painted landscapes. Christopher Fitzgerald then used as references for much larger trompe l’oeil paintings where there appears to be pronounced impasto but the picture plane remains extremely flat. More recently he has sculpted mounds of paint like mini-movie props and then uses macro photography to aid in painting the larger work. The perspective setup of this Austin artist Christopher Fitzgerald is subtle but creates a feeling that we are peering onto a stage. He thereby provides a theatrical atmosphere bringing alive the symbolic nature of paint, instead of creating an exclusive artifice of aesthetic distance. These fascinating photos function as structural springboards for even more compelling paintings. In the larger works, ethereal skies provide the Caravaggio-like drama of light dancing over the translated landscapes of paint.</p> <p><h1>Copyright 2006 Christopher Fitzgerald. This Austin artist explores raw, visceral, direct painting informed by the study of recent art history and psychology.</h1></p> <p>His statement following: I believe the powerful internal logic of painting is revealed when all elements are subjugated to naked form and color. The process of moving layer upon layer of lavish thick paint and involving myself physically with the surface undermines expectations for the representational image and reasserts the primacy of the act. More than evoking the memory of an emotion in a particular situation, titles like Loaded, Volition, Orgasm, Revenge suggest a kind of physical manifestation of emotion. These “process” paintings stand somewhere between painting and sculpture by making visible in the final painting the attempt to infuse spirit into something inert.</p> <p>His statement following: I believe the powerful internal logic of painting is revealed when all elements are subjugated to naked form and color. The process of moving layer upon layer of lavish thick paint and involving myself physically with the surface undermines Austin artist expectations for the representational image and reasserts the primacy of the act. Christopher Fitzgerald more than evokes the memory of an emotion in a particular situation, titles like Loaded, Volition, Orgasm, Revenge suggest a kind of physical manifestation of emotion. These “process” paintings stand somewhere between painting and sculpture by making visible in the final painting the attempt to infuse spirit into something inert. In his previous works, he accentuated the texture of his paint paints with actual, tactile brush strokes, but his latest canvases are mirror-smooth. Adam Diaz opened his gallery a little over a year ago and rotates shows of work by up-and-coming artists engaged in a wide variety of mediums. <h2>Austin artist Christopher Fitzgerald is obsessed with big, voluptuous, shiny globs of paint.</h2></p> </body>