le roseau pensant

Paintings...

2011-10-20T11:31:00.007+02:00

Some new paintings (there are many others in process). I like the idea of each painting having its own "weather"...storms, tempests, gales etc:

Hurlevent, 2011, oil and collage on linen, 75.5 x 60.5cm

Hurlevent (detail)

Hurlevent (october evening), 2011, oil and mixed media on canvas, 70 x 53 cm

Borrascoso, 2011, oil and collage on linen, 61 x 50.5 cm

Barrier, 2011, oil and mixed media on linen, 46 x 41 cm

Review of Twenty

2011-06-09T18:01:00.003+02:00

A review of Twenty in today's Irish Times.

Twenty

2011-06-09T17:17:00.006+02:00

The Irish Museum of Modern Art recently acquired my painting Swarms the Moth for their collection. This painting along with Domingo (also in the IMMA collection) and five recent drawings are currently on display in a group exhibition entitled Twenty curated by the director Enrique Juncosa. Swarms the Moth as a title was inspired by a text written by the German expressionist painter Franz Marc. For the opening event of the show I arranged a reading by the actress Edel Murphy. For this I chose a text by Virginia Wolf entitled The Death of the Moth. I was moved by this text for many reasons. It seemed like a poetic description of my process and how that might be bound up with our obscure existential condition. Here is an extract from the text (full version here):

"The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the windowpane. One could not help watching him. One, was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meager opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one cor- ner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fiber, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life."

From The Death of the Moth and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf. Copyright © 1942 by Harcourt, Inc.

Swarms the Moth, 2010, oil and collage on linen, 160x180cm, collection Irish Museum Of Modern Art.

Yesterday in the Studio...

2011-06-01T10:52:00.005+02:00

Nocturnal Walk

2011-05-31T18:52:00.002+02:00

"Who even knows what he thinks or wants? Who knows what he is to himself? How many things music suggests, and we're glad they can never be! How many things the night recalls, and we weep, and they never even were! As if a long, horizontal peace had raised its voice, the risen wave crashes and then calms, and dribbling can be heard up and down the invisible beach.
How much I die if I feel for everything! How much I feel if I meander this way, bodiless and human, with my heart as still as a beach, and the entire sea of all things beating loud and derisive, then becoming calm, on the night that we live, on my eternal nocturnal walk to the seashore"

Fernando Pessoa from The Book of Disquiet.

New York, the open box and getting beyond the surface...

2011-05-31T17:36:00.017+02:00

I had a number of very interesting conversations with artists in New York. The ideas sometimes revolved around certain questions... most notably the need for painting to have a relationship with reality and experience as opposed to painting as a kind of exclusive painting language game. On one level it is a language game of course but I increasingly see its meaning as a much more layered and open. The question is, what do we have left that we can draw on as a source and how do we go about making paintings that do this?

Mark Grotjahn is showing nine paintings at Anton Kern Gallery (the show has been titled Nine Faces). The images consist of curving lines that seem to be painted with a palette knife. The lines accumulate into layered, woven swathes of paint, which somehow conjure up faces and eyes. It is exhilarating to behold them but I do sense a danger in these paintings which is that the technique might become too assured and predictable. Editing (so crucial) is always a challenge because one can never get enough distance from ones work to be objective. What does one release from the studio? Why is one painting so much better than another very similar one? How should the work be presented? I think this show might have been much more intense with just five paintings.

Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Vertical Almond face 41.04), 2010
Oil on cardboard mounted on linen
108 1/8 x 73 1/4 inches
Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, NY

Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Distinguished Multiple V's Late Monet Face 41.34), 2010
Oil on cardboard mounted on linen
119 3/8 x 84 3/8 inches
Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, NY

Installation view
Anton Kern Gallery, 2011 Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, NY

Jean Fautrier knew that paintings could become paintings of paintings. Style then becomes everything and the inherent risk of kitsch and self-parody are ever present. Fautrier devised strategies to navigate this problem. The English painter Katy Moran does so as well. Initially seductive, the paintings she has on view at Andrea Rosen Gallery look like excercises in a certain kind of post-war European painting. They play the painting game. The problem is that if painting is a closed box the air inside can get sterile. It is necessary to create small openings in the box to let life in, sunlight, rain, the smell of the street or the earth, the cries of a child or the sounds of the night. Suffering, pain, sadness, joy, love, sex… these too of course, not necessarily as representation but as a source.

Katy Moran
at home with mickey
2011
acrylic and collage on canvas
19.88 x 17.09 inches
(50.5 x 43.4 cm)
courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery

Installation View at Andrea Rosen Gallery
courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery

New York

2011-05-31T12:33:00.029+02:00

View through the window of a corner cafe, Union Square.

I spent some time in New York this month. I still have the sensation of seeing certain paintings by Bonnard in the Metropolitan Museum and at MOMA fresh in my memory. I’m still trying to articulate to myself just what it is about Bonnard that makes such an impression on me.

Pierre Bonnard, The Dressing Room, 1914, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum Of Art.

Painting is never just a visual phenomenon. It is about the body and how the mind’s eye becomes physical through touch. Bonnard seems to rebuild the world in painting. He uses certain painterly components of a certain kind, limited in their range but with sufficient variety to enable him to reconfigure (at the equivalent of an atomic level) the nature of things - light and material become one thing. A typical 'Bonnardian' head is painted in exactly the same way as say a jug on a table which that same painted head seems to contemplate. Bonnard had his own very specific touch which had its origins in his bodily being and the multitude of indefinable qualities that made it up.

Painterly components governed by sensibility (I use this word with its explicit links to our all our senses). I have my own supply of painting components to use of course. Whether they are painted marks, collaged forms or materials, drawn lines, accumulations etc. they all present themselves in a painting as a kind of combined energy. There are gestures, but also placements, idle deposits or very precise positioning of elements. I think I can finally understand that a painting is a figure – not just a figure on a ground but the painting as a figure in its own right which is both concealed and disclosed in the process of making.

All the photographs in this post are my own. I also looked at paintings by Courbet, Braque, Derain and Matisse.

Pierre Bonnard, The Dressing Room, 1914, oil on canvas (detail).

Pierre Bonnard, After the Bath, 1910, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum Of Art.

Pierre Bonnard, After the Bath, 1910, oil on canvas (detail).

Georges Braque, The Garden Chair, 1947-60, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum Of Art.

Georges Braque, The Garden Chair, 1947-60, oil on canvas (detail).

André Derain, The Sunken Path, 1906, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

André Derain, The Sunken Path, 1906, oil on canvas (detail).

Mothlight

2011-04-19T15:22:00.003+02:00

Mothlight by Stan Brakhage (1963)

Old geezer painters...

2011-04-14T11:10:00.002+02:00

“In painting, youth will only be granted to the most deserving of old geezers.”

Jean Bazaine (quoted by Gwenaël Kerlidou in his article about the painter Eugene Leroy in the Brooklyn Rail)

Book Event

2011-03-14T12:37:00.005+01:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More invite

Three drawings...

2011-03-07T17:51:00.007+01:00

Rustle (divide), 2011, coloured pencil on paper, 32.5x25cm

Rustle (night), 2011, coloured pencil on paper, 32.5x25cm

Rustle (Rose), 2011, coloured pencil on paper, 32.5x25cm

Some recent drawings...

2011-02-24T12:31:00.006+01:00

Cluster, 2011, coloured pencil on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm

Cluster (red), 2011, coloured pencil on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm

Branching, 2011, coloured pencil & collage on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm

Interview

2011-02-16T10:44:00.002+01:00

A new interview about my work can be found on the following blog:

http://standardinterview.blogspot.com/

Also follow the link from there to another blog of interest on contemporary painting:

http://fundamentalpainting.blogspot.com/

Roulette

2011-02-10T23:16:00.004+01:00

"Well, again, I don't think one really knows whether it's a run of luck or whether it's instinct working in your favour or whether it's instinct and consciousness and everything intermingling and working in your favour".

Francis Bacon

New Paintings

2011-01-30T17:57:00.011+01:00

Holding (for J. Fautrier), 2011, oil and Collage on linen, 180x160cm

Detail of Holding (for J. Fautrier)

Passage, 2011, oil and enamel on linen and wood, 50x45cm

Stages, 2011, oil on linen, 160x180cm

Swarms the Moth, 2010, oil and collage on linen, 160x180cm

The Tree (deliberation), 2010, oil and collage on linen, 128x106cm

Detail of The Tree (deliberation)

DRAWING NOW PARIS

2011-01-14T15:15:00.002+01:00

A selection of new drawings will be on view with Guest Room Contemporary Art at "Le Salon du Dessin Contemporain/Drawing Now" at the Caroussel du Louvre from 25 to 28 March 2011:

Informal Relations Publication

2011-01-14T11:54:00.002+01:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More works on paper

My Morphine

2010-12-31T12:12:00.003+01:00

Esta mañana en el estudio...

2010-12-01T15:08:00.012+01:00

Some pictures of my studio this morning. I have been working on larger paintings.

Bones, branches, sinews, overlapping swathes of colour, collage.... structures of pain and pleasure. The touch along the line - a curious affirmation in doubt.

Informal Relations

2010-11-30T09:57:00.002+01:00

I am delighted to have work included in "Informal Relations" a project curated by Scott Grow at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art:

INFORMAL RELATIONS
contemporary abstract works on paper
December 3^rd - January 15^th
Opening reception is December 3^rd from 6pm - 11pm
Gallery hours are Thursday - Saturday 11am - 6pm

The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) is pleased to announce the group exhibition, Informal Relations curated by Indianapolis based artist and curator Scott Grow.

Informal Relations presents recent abstract works on paper by a diverse group of international artists, and focuses on the diversity of practices-approaches, styles, and intentions-- within painting and abstraction today. The exhibition's title refers to kind the "informal relations" artists have with one another, their predecessors, with the modernist tradition, the future, and even with their own work. While works on paper may stand as finished works, they are also often places for exploration, thinking, planning, taking chances, and failure.

Abstract art is challenging because of its concrete and/or metaphoric nature which refuses expected representation, its defiance of language and absolute interpretation, and because it requires the viewer's engagement and participation. And because abstraction is not a singular school or style, the term itself is not necessarily helpful in identifying the qualities or concepts embodied in the art object: artists often naturally have shared and conflicting objectives for the art they make. Abstraction, which lends itself to various aesthetic, conceptual, and political stances, is broadly multiphasic, utilitarian, and flexible.

Each artist presented here confronts, investigates, and presents a definition of abstract painting true to his or her materials, motifs, and sensibilities. Informal Relations explores the similarities, differences, and connections between these artists, their dialog with abstraction's history, and various directions forward for abstraction.

This exhibition presents the works of 32 artists from across the United States and abroad. Participating artists include: Patrick Alt, Chris Ashley, Patrick Berran, Kadar Brock, Matthew Deleget, Laura Fayer, Keltie Ferris, Patrick Michael Fitzgerald, Connie Goldman, Brent Hallard, Rachel Hayes, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Michael Just, Matthew Langley, Jim Lee, Rossana Martinez, Rob Nadeau, Melissa Oresky, Paul Pagk, Danielle Riede,Maximilian Rödel , Eric Sall, Susan Scott, Gabriel J. Shuldiner, Jessica Snow, Henning Straßburger, Garth Weiser, Wendy White, Paige Williams, Douglas Witmer, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung and John Zurier.

For further information visit, www.indymoca.org

Things Read...Macbeth

2010-11-17T13:27:00.001+01:00

...Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, act V, scene 5

Things read...Thomas Bernhard

2010-11-14T22:24:00.002+01:00

"I now had an opportunity to examine my grandfather's assertions. I had an obsessive desire to gather the evidence in my head, and so I began a strenuous search for the evidence, tracking it down in every direction, in every corner of the city of my youth and its surroundings. My grandfather had been right in his judgment of the world: it was indeed a cesspit, but one which engendered the most intricate and beautiful forms if one looked into it long enough, if one's eye was prepared for such strenuous and microscopic observation"

Thomas Bernhard

A few thoughts (doubts)...

2010-11-12T11:07:00.002+01:00

How should we understand the political in art?
Everything is political on one level, or so it is said.
To be very wary of systems though… in thought too (My love for Pascal). And is it possible to do this in painting? Painting as something forever renegade?

Critical theory can become an orthodoxy in its own right. Before one knows it you are dancing with the devil.

We have seen that everything can become a commodity. Even ideas.
Is this an absolute? How determining is this fact? What status can things (eg. Paintings) have outside the commodity realm?
Painting has its inner worlds; its history makes it problematic but also provides the conventions and frameworks to sustain it (problematically).

Art needs to be problematic. Its very nature is problematic. Does this problematic nature need to be tempered by existential factors? What about pleasure?
The pleasure of making? The pleasure of viewing? Why shun these?

Painting is not one thing. It is not static. It is a confluence (a meeting place?).
Painting (as I see it) is pre-political. It is not sustained by circular critical theory in this sense. Can it lay the ground for kinds of experience from which we can learn (politically)? Crucially, painting can be a place where we can interact on many levels, especially at a phenomological level: forces, energy, synthesis, destruction, creation, openness, flow…

Dead Flowers

2010-11-12T10:08:00.002+01:00

Dead Flowers, 2010, coloured pencil and collage on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm

Dublin - London

2010-11-07T18:00:00.012+01:00

I have been away in Dublin and London. Returned recently. I saw a lot of things and spent time with good people, both family and friends. At the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin I saw for the first time Samuel Beckett's Film (1965). It is part of an exhibition called "The Moderns" that surveys Irish modernism in all its aspects. Film features Buster Keaton whom we only ever see from behind moving about a forlorn room and interacting with a number of objects. It was something of a revelation. There is a strange sense of being the viewer of the viewer. Here it is in two parts:

In London I was lucky enough to see the Paul Gauguin exhibition at Tate Modern (though I had to wade through unbearable crowds of people all shuffling around with their gaze lowered into audio/visual guides). The earlier works in the exhibition and some of the landscapes are extraordinary things, the way they are constructed, the use of colour, the strange compositions, the curved forms which overlap and interlock - and painted with feathery strokes which seem to activate the forms in some way, the space which is neither flat nor has depth in a conventional sense, the hybrid imagery so original yet obscure... and I could go on. Much is made of the figures; the girls and women. These are the motifs in many of the later paintings. I think it is important the way they are flattened and intersect or lock into the landscape around them. A single tree will often divide a landscape almost in the middle of the painting....an ancestor perhaps of a similar motif in my recent paintings and drawings: the spine.

Another day I ventured up the Finchley Road to the Camden Arts Center to see an exhibition of paintings by Rene Daniëls. I first discovered the work of Daniëls when I was still a student and it made a big impression on me. Occasions to view his work are very rare nowadays and though this was just a relatively small selection of paintings it is nevertheless a special opportunity to experience something of his painterly world: populated by such things as bow ties that become perspectival rooms, rats on skateboards, coat hangers, red landscapes, shoals of fish, trees with words for leaves... I saw the exhibition with another artist; Nick Miller. Talking of painting and its task he said that it is an adventure, in Daniëls this adventure with its risk and openness is at the core of what he does and is not without a certain irony and this in turn, I feel, defines their self-conscious poetry.

Zonder Title (Untitled), 1983, Oil on canvas © the artist
Courtesy of Paul Andriesse

Wandering around the West End galleries I came across a show of paintings by Beatriz Milhazes at Stephen Friedman Gallery. Somehow, like certain kinds of music (Jazz perhaps), they embody a hard won Joy. The technicality of their making (which must be elaborate) does not make them cumbersome - which is always a danger. Instead their geometry is fluid and festive. I was quite thrilled by them... I was lifted from an incipient melancholy that had been with me for most of the day. We know now (more than ever before) just how vast and terrifying those infinite spaces are that Blaise Pascal meditated upon. We know that from the perspective of the universe we are quite literally nothing, specs of insignificance. But we have to live our lives (we are condemned by our condition and physicality to do so) from the inside of our bodies and minds outwards. We have our own scale of experience, tempered by death, which highlights the extreme particularity of our created things. Against the backdrop of an impersonal universe and spans of time that are almost incomprehensible, there seems to be an extreme tension in the mere fact of the existence of say the music of Bach or the art of painting - so defined by its nuance and extremely specific qualities. A line is drawn in pencil...softly on the paper, a yellow smudge is placed in an instant on the canvas with an old brush, a small irregular piece of dark cloth is glued on the surface of the painting... there is a tension of scale, a dread and an awareness of fragility, of the sheer possible insignificance of what we are doing. This is the case in all our endeavours of course, but it is especially apparent in those that by nature, are willed into being even though we know they have no practical use or certain outcome. Why do we, as a species, as creatures and beings, have this capacity (is it a gift?), which in its most accomplished forms gives us the music of Bach or the paintings of Matisse?

Comments

2010-10-31T20:53:00.002+01:00

Due to the increasing number of spam email I have been receiving the comments feature of this blog will be disabled for the time being. I very much appreciate all the genuine comments people have made and it is still possible to contact me if need be using the contact form here.

New drawings

2010-10-31T12:19:00.009+01:00

Over the last few months I have been making a lot of drawings which frequently use collage. Here are four of them....

Festive, 2010, coloured pencil and collage on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm

Dispersal, 2010, coloured pencil and collage on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm

October (afternoon), 2010, coloured pencil on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm

Festive II, 2010, coloured pencil and collage on paper, 32.5 x 25 cm

Upcoming show - Informal Relations

2010-10-18T17:26:00.002+02:00

Informal Relations: curated by Scott Grow
Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art
Dec 3, 2010 – Jan 15, 2011

Patrick Alt, Chris Ashley, Patrick Berran, Kadar Brock, Matthew Deleget, Laura Fayer, Keltie Ferris, Patrick Michael Fitzgerald, Connie Goldman, Brent Hallard, Rachel Hayes, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Michael Just, Matthew Langley, Jim Lee, Rossana Martinez, Rob Nadeau, Melissa Oresky, Paul Pagk, Danielle Riede, Maximillian Rodel, Eric Sall, Susan Scott, Gabriel J. Shuldiner, Jessica Snow, Henning Straßburger, Garth Weiser, Wendy White, Paige Williams, Douglas Witmer, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, John Zurier.

Through a window...

2010-10-14T10:13:00.002+02:00

A view through the window of a Cafe in Bilbao the other day...I liked the way the plant fragmented my vision:

Things seen: Natasja Kensmil

2010-10-08T12:52:00.002+02:00

Natasja Kensmil, Untitled, 2001, 150x120cm

LINK

The crux, experience and idea...

2010-10-08T12:10:00.005+02:00

A partially completed drawing by Goethe included in his 1790 “Zur Morphologie”

"They arrive at Schiller's house and, still talking, Goethe enters. This is Goethe's account of the occasion: 'I explained to him with great vivacity the Metamorphosis of Plants and, with a few characteristic strokes of the pen, conjured up before his eyes a symbolical plant. He listened, and looked at it all with great interest and intelligence; but when I had ended, he shook his head saying: This has nothing to do with experience, it is an idea. I raised my eyebrows, somewhat annoyed. For he had put his finger on precisely the point which separated us. His argument from Anmut und Würde came to my mind; the old anger began to stir, but I constrained myself and replied: Well, so much the better; it means that I have ideas without knowing it, and can even see them with my eyes.' They carried on their discussion with great polemical obstinacy on each side. Goethe reports that some of Schiller's sentences made him 'quite unhappy'; for instance, the following: 'How can one ever equate experience with ideas? For an idea is characterized precisely by the fact that experience can never be fully congruous to it.' And, Goethe, in his account of the discussion, reflects that 'if he takes for an idea what for me is experience, then there must, after all, prevail some mediation, some relationship between the two'.

From The Disinherited Mind: Essays in Modern German Literature and Thought by Eric Heller.

Some Walls

2010-10-03T17:47:00.003+02:00

Patrick Michael Fitzgerald: “New Paintings & Drawings”
October 2 – November 21, 2010

At Some Walls - a curatorial and writing art project in Oakland, California.

Peso (Verde) - 2010

Leaves/Shadows

2010-10-02T16:38:00.002+02:00

A little painting (now belonging to a good friend) made over the summer: Untitled, 2010, oil on canvas, 27x22cm.

Return

2010-10-02T16:23:00.006+02:00

Things have been somewhat quiet here on the blog in recent weeks. Energy seems to be focused elsewhere... but it's time to continue, the need is there. A number of new paintings (and drawings) have been slowly evolving over the summer months. Here are a few fragments and details...more images will follow soon:

Maturity

2010-08-29T00:09:00.003+02:00

"A man's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play"

Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil

Body

2010-08-29T00:07:00.002+02:00

The painter should learn to trust his body.

Secret Motivations

2010-08-29T00:03:00.001+02:00

I have found that painting most betrays its secret motivations when it deals with things strictly on its own terms. Only then did I understand that it (my painting activity) is to do with the most commonplace stuff of our daily life, and in the most intimate ways: the problems in painting reflect our experience of life. What we inevitably lose in life we attempt to recover in a transfigured way in painting.

The hazard

2010-08-29T00:02:00.001+02:00

There is always a danger of becoming a parody of oneself.

At stake...

2010-08-28T23:39:00.002+02:00

There is a very fine line between the worst possible piece of absolute trash and a wonderful painting. It is pure idiocy to talk of a painter who knows or doesn’t know how to paint. A painter who comes to realize what is really at stake in his daily activity has learnt how to value that which is constantly being found by chance or otherwise.

Reviews

2010-07-09T17:49:00.009+02:00

A number of reviews have appeared related to my recent shows in Dublin and Brussels.
Here they are along with links to the publications etc.:

Published in the Brooklyn Rail, July/August 2010 www.brooklynrail.net

Patrick Michael Fitzgerald, Drawings.

By John Yau

GUEST ROOM/CONTEMPORARY ART BRUSSELS, BELGIUM JUNE 10 – JULY 17, 2010

Guest Room/Contemporary Art is the brainchild of Nicolas Lemmens and Olivia Delwart. Situated in a quiet neighborhood on top of a hill in what is known as upper Brussels (there are two levels to the city), the gallery is a small white cube facing onto the street; it is open Wednesday and Saturday from 2:00 to 6:00 pm, and by appointment. The artist’s bio and checklist, as well as copies of catalogs, are lined up on the inside window ledge and are easily visible to the passerby who stops to look inside the window (it is lit up at night until 12:00 p.m.), and is curious to know more. According to Lemmens, the literature is meant to get people interested, without putting any pressure on them. After all, if you step inside, you would literally be coming for your second look and, one assumes, a more intimate engagement.

The eighth exhibition (or Guest #8) was of the drawings of Patrick Michael Fitzgerald, an Irish artist who lives and works in Vizcaya, outside Bilbao, Spain. In an e-mail conversation with Chris Ashley, an artist who directs Some Walls a curatorial and writing art project in Oakland (CA), Fitzgerald wrote: I still believe that painting can respond directly to the world of things, experience, and “reality” on its own terms. Many of the drawings were done in 2009, while Fitzgerald was an Artist in Residence in Andratx, Majorca. Done in colored pencil, ink, and collage, all the drawings are vertical and approximately 12 by 9 inches. The inspiration behind them seems to be the place where they were made. The starting point for the “Andratx” drawings, as many of them are titled, is something ordinary—a tree, evening light, and shadow.

Using a vocabulary that consists of a few vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines (a skeletal geometry) juxtaposed against ragged and rounded shapes, and perfectly cut, collaged circles, and pristine cut-out spaces, Fitzgerald responds to something palpable in the world. The often-layered space, while alluding to nature, also conveys drawing as an accumulation of decisions, as well as a visual indication of time past. One both sees and sees into these drawings, with the layering reiterated by the use of collage in the form of the perfectly round circles. For Fitzgerald, drawing isn’t only a surface waiting to register the artist’s marks; it is a thing. In some cases, it isn’t hard to make an equation between the drawing and its title, but to try and locate the works only within the discursive realm is to miss their strength.

Fitzgerald believes drawing is a construction that explores the tension between structure and dissolution. In Andratx (Pools, Thoughts), 2009, he partitions the drawing with three red lines into three areas, with the one along the bottom further divided by a diagonal red line rising from near the left corner. The diagonal, interacting with another right above it, turns the areas they enclose into tilting planes, and, at the same time, introduces a spatial possibility that Fitzgerald builds upon with a bluish-purple form across the drawing’s lower half. Rounded brown shapes packed closely together share the same plane as the bluish-purple shape (the pool?). Over this field, Fitzgerald attaches perfect circles done in different shades of blue, gray, and magenta, as well as two cut from a printed page of blue and black. These circles compel us to read the drawing tactilely, as well as visually. They pull our attention in, even as they become a disruption.

For all the deliberate thought that goes into these drawings, they feel neither restrained nor governed by an overriding goal. In fact, they feel like something the artist found. Each drawing is made up of a different group of colors, and the shapes and marks feel intrinsic to the drawing. Sometimes the way a bar-like shape overlays another evokes the possibility that the artist used tape to decide where something goes; this recalls for me the late works of Piet Mondrian. By responding to his immediate environment, Fitzgerald shares something with two older abstract artists, Raoul De Keyser and Thomas Nozkowski. Fitzgerald’s works do not suffer by comparison.

Fitzgerald’s vocabulary is basic—there is nothing elaborate or stylish about his lines and circles, rough and ragged shapes. He relies on colored pencils, ink, and collage—nothing fancy. And yet—and this is why Fitzgerald seems to me to be on the verge of becoming an important and singular artist—the work comes across as taut and fresh, brimming with an awareness that the act of seeing is a construction, at once fluid and disrupted.

Click on image to read:

L'abstraction aux limites de la non figuration, Claude Lorent, Libre Belgique - Artes Libre, July 2nd.

Speed, energy and intensity - Aidan Dunne, The Irish Times, May 12th 2010.

BIHOTZ, THE title of Patrick Michael Fitzgerald’s exhibition at the Rubicon Gallery, is the Basque word for heart, both anatomically and figuratively speaking. Fitzgerald’s work is about the self’s engagement with the world, both the physical self and the thinking, feeling self, the essence of personal identity. The paintings themselves are abstract, although they do evoke spaces and systems including, as a catalogue note mentions, the biological system that is the human body. All of this is conveyed with great verve, inventiveness and wit.

Fitzgerald is not a representational artist, though. He doesn’t make pictures that resemble the way things look. He makes pictures that correlate to the way things are, or theories we have about the way things are. One suspects that there are people who just would not get his work at all, who could not really relate to it, and not because of any lack on the part of either the work or the people. What he does emerges from a dialogue between sets of conventions and possibilities. That is, he uses the language of painting and drawing rather in the way that a musician will use an inherited tradition.

The tension that arises from the combination of predictability and unpredictability makes the work interesting. If you have no familiarity with or liking for a particular musical form or, in Fitzgerald’s case, abstract painting, you are unlikely to be persuaded. So his potential audience is likely to be specialised and to that extent limited. He’s not an especially Irish artist. There’s a distinctly international flavour to what he does. In fact, although he was born in Ireland, he attended Chelsea College of Art in London, and he is based in northern Spain, close to Bilbao – hence the show’s Basque title. And in that demanding international context, his work is easily as good as anything you’re likely to find.

En proceso...

2010-07-09T17:31:00.010+02:00

Fortunately, my studio stays cool. Outside it might be over 30 degrees but I can still work in a pleasant enough environment, my studio is on street level and never gets the full impact of the sun. Over the last month or so, I have been working on a number of both large and small paintings...here are a few images. All these paintings are are in process, some nearer completion than others:

New Publication

2010-06-23T23:40:00.004+02:00

A new book focusing on recent work has just been published by Rubicon Gallery:

Paintings and drawings by Patrick Michael Fitzgerald, 65 pages, with a text by Frank Lubbers.

ISBN 978-0-9554084-9-6. Here is an image of the cover...

Studio today...

2010-06-23T13:11:00.002+02:00

A view of my studio this morning with three works currently in progress. The large white painting is indeed very large for me: 180x160cm !

Jan Fyt

2010-06-23T13:03:00.002+02:00

This wonderful painting by Jan Fyt (1611-1661) "Les champignons" is in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels... it reminds one of the serious pleasure (and hope) that certain paintings can provide. Many thanks to Frank Lubbers for pointing it out to me.

Wild Speculation

2010-06-20T23:43:00.001+02:00

"I Believe in a world that objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture"

Albert Einstein

Rue Renier Chalon

2010-06-15T19:19:00.002+02:00

Here is a video of my current exhibition of drawings (and one painting) at Guest Room in Brussels. It's not the best quality video but it gives an idea of the installation and the included works:

Brussels

2010-06-01T11:02:00.003+02:00

A exhibition of drawings will open on the 10th of June at Guest Room/Contemporary Art, Brussels. Here is the invite:

In process...

2010-05-24T15:14:00.006+02:00

Here a four new paintings all nearing completion...

More views...

2010-05-12T12:15:00.005+02:00

A few more images of my current exhibition at Rubicon Gallery:

Bihotz exhibition at Rubicon Gallery

2010-05-07T19:13:00.006+02:00

Here are some installation views of my exhibition at Rubicon Gallery, Dublin:

Two paintings...

2010-04-30T12:57:00.005+02:00

Both these paintings are hovering just above the ground... about to touch down...

Bihotz

2010-04-26T11:56:00.003+02:00

This coming weekend I will be flying to Dublin to hang my show at Rubicon Gallery. It opens on Wednesday 5th May. Here is the invite...

Things seen - Vuillard

2010-04-23T10:37:00.003+02:00

Edouard Vuillard: Under the trees, 1897, oil on canvas, 53x67cm, held in the collection of the Museo Thyssen, Madrid.

Manifold

2010-04-17T17:45:00.006+02:00

Here is a little painting, one of a number I will be showing in my forthcoming show titled Bihotz at Rubicon Gallery, Dublin.

Manifold, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 35x25cm

A Million Miles Away...

2010-04-16T15:58:00.001+02:00

Spider's touch

2010-04-08T11:48:00.002+02:00

The spiders touch, how exquisitely fine!

Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

Alexander Pope from the Essay on Man.

Petals on the ground...

2010-04-07T13:17:00.003+02:00

Shadows and white petals on the ground which I observed while out for a walk the other day.

The application of paint: to define this a little...it is not expressionistic or the exaltation of gesture, it is not the drama of action painting either. The way one paints or makes something can so often seem like a parody of itself. So, perhaps for me, it could simply be a placement of material, of paint...colour. Making marks. Depositing and positioning something on a surface. Most importantly, it is touch. Through the hand and movement of the arm and body in time, the eyes touch the surface with the brush or implement. Accumulations. Leaving evidence of my time on the surface which becomes a painting. The images form organically like the growth of a tree. Tributes to themselves and the knowledge that the looking is never really done. And then the contradiction: trying to fix and hold still the fleeting moment and that which is always in flow. Leaves fall to the ground along with white petals and the shadows of branches slowly come and go...

K

2010-04-06T01:19:00.002+02:00

K, 2009, oil on linen, 27x22cm

Pools (shadows)

2010-04-03T22:27:00.003+02:00

Pools (shadows), 2009, coloured pencil, gouache and collage on paper, 32.5x25cm.

La Folie du Jour

2010-04-03T21:01:00.002+02:00

Can I describe my trials? I was not able to walk, or breathe, or eat. My breath was made of stone, my body of water, and yet I was dying of thirst. One day they thrust me into the ground; the doctors covered me with mud. What work went on at the bottom of that earth! Who says it's cold? It's a bed of fire, it's a bramble bush. When I got up I could feel nothing. My sense of touch was floating six feet away from me; if anyone entered the room, I would cry out, but the knife was serenely cutting me up. Yes, I became a skeleton. At night my thinness would rise up before me to terrify me. As it came and went it insulted me, it tired me out; oh, I was certainly very tired.

From The Madness Of The Day by Maurice Blanchot 1973, translated by Lydia Davies: Station Hill Press.

A drawing by Carl Fredrik Hill (1849-1911)...

2010-03-29T15:39:00.005+02:00

Crisscrossed

2010-03-22T12:51:00.002+01:00

But shadow enlivened by atoms of sunlight
Constantly crisscrossed by sleepless flies.

Francis Ponge from Mute Objects of Expression

Hoy en el estudio...

2010-03-21T19:00:00.008+01:00

Two paintings practically finished. In fact, the darker of the two (shown at an earlier stage on the blog) really is finished. Both are oil, spray paint and collage on linen:

Gyorgy Ligeti - Artikulation

2010-03-11T16:03:00.001+01:00

Two Fold Frame

2010-03-09T16:16:00.002+01:00

... A twofold frame of body and mind./
The state to which I now allude was one/
In which the eye was master of the heart,/
When that which is in every single stage of life/
The most despotic of our senses gained/
Such strength in me as often held my mind/
In absolute dominion.

William Wordsworth, The Prelude

Studio today

2010-03-03T21:18:00.001+01:00

Klezmer Tango

2010-03-03T11:13:00.000+01:00

What I like about Tango is the way it threads different elements together: something highly refined, something very raw, different traditions, Spanish, Italian, French, Jewish....Jazz, the classical tradition....and a lot more. Here is an example of Klezmer Tango:

Daniel Melingo

2010-03-03T10:47:00.002+01:00

I discovered the music of Daniel Melingo about a year ago. Wonderful stuff...the world of Tango...

Blue Van

2010-02-25T22:44:00.003+01:00

A blue van parked across the street from my studio this morning....

Things seen - Philip Guston

2010-02-20T22:18:00.003+01:00

Cerveteri, 1972, oil on paper, 58.4x73.7cm

More images

Arco

2010-02-20T18:25:00.002+01:00

Some drawings currently installed at the ARCO art fair, Madrid with Rubicon Gallery.

Strange day

2010-02-15T18:28:00.004+01:00

Strange day, 2008-10, oil, varnish & lacquer on wood, 75x60cm

Strange day detail.

Folds (for RR)

2010-02-15T18:21:00.005+01:00

Folds (for RR), 2009-10, oil on wood panel, 142x110cm

Folds (for RR), detail.

Spine (February)

2010-02-10T16:59:00.004+01:00

Spine (February), 2010, oil and collage on linen, 55x46cm

Spine (February), detail.

Risk

2010-02-10T13:18:00.003+01:00

"Risk is a quest, from occurence to occurence, in the infinity of possibilities"

George Bataille from Sur Nietzsche.

Body

2010-02-08T10:32:00.001+01:00

"The painter takes his body with him"

Paul Valéry

Hoy en el estudio...

2010-02-06T17:55:00.003+01:00

Five new paintings

2010-01-26T23:16:00.008+01:00

Three drawings

2010-01-14T12:14:00.005+01:00

Photography usually only operates on one level. It is purely visual. The camera - an extension of the eye that is almost the passive receptor of the endless flow of ever accumulating images. A drawing or painting of a certain kind can be something really very different. It can integrate the eye with all our senses. One's body, through its movement is an interface with a manifold sensorial reality. Our hands see. Our eyes touch in a particular way the surface of paper. Something is brought into being...it is not just an image or representation (that would be too virtual). It is a kind of realm where one responds to the world in a special way. Through time the drawing unfolds, texture, the span of the hand (an intuitive measuring), the tensing of mortal muscle and bone. Flow and friction of the drawing implement on surface. Our mind should not be plagued by concepts here. Instead, through the making (and the viewing) of such works and processes it should learn how to attune these experiences of the here and now, collect them and learn how to see and feel them in a more intense way.

November - Bernhard, 2009, coloured pencil and holes on paper, 32.5x25cm

Shadows - Tree, 2009, coloured pencil and hole on paper, 32.5x25cm

Time Tree, 2009, coloured pencil and holes on paper, 32.5x25cm

Alpha - Köln

2010-01-10T18:20:00.001+01:00

A short video of the recent group show ALPHA in Köln...

Things seen - Helmut Federle

2009-12-29T13:19:00.003+01:00

Japanische See im Mondlicht (Japanese Sea in Moonlight), 2009
acrylic on canvas, 60 x 50 cm

There is currently an exhibition of five small paintings by Helmut Federle at Peter Blum Gallery in New York. Sadly I won´t be able to see them in the flesh. There is a very good interview with him in the Brooklyn Rail by John Yau and the painter Chris Martin.

Things heard - Scott Ross playing Jean-Philippe Rameau

2009-12-29T13:11:00.002+01:00

Málaga

2009-12-20T21:36:00.016+01:00

A few days in Malaga. From the window of the plane mountains (and valleys) covered in snow. While most of Spain suffers freezing temperatures Málaga is surprisingly mild, though it is raining on and off. At the Museo Picasso, Sophie Taeuber-Arp: wonderful, really wonderful. The refinement of patterns and structures which nearly always contain “dissident” elements within compositions. Then Picasso. I rarely think about Picasso. When I do see his paintings and drawings, I am naturally, always astonished. There are some great things here, among them: two small pencil drawings. Almost nothing. Female nudes. Reclining. In each a spontaneous flower like scrawl over the stomach area. Strange things. And, something else to think about, not just Picasso´s colour, but the material too. The materiality of the paintings. The Cathedral has a small museum, in reality just two dimly lit rooms…but at the end of the first room is a Ribera: Saint Peter the hermit: a lovely work, his long flowing beard the light etc. And speaking of the Cathedral, how I would love to see it without any of the paraphernalia: clear it all out, relics, confessionals, paintings, statues and all. I would keep the monumental organ…the only thing worthy of being there. Yesterday, I walked to the Centro de Arte Contempóraneo Málaga where I saw Wilhelm Sasnal again (I saw his exhibition recently in Dusseldorf). This is a completely different show with different works. Mixed feelings, but the odd good painting. Other than that, plenty of wandering the streets, sitting in cafes and restaurants etc (The waiters here are slow and indifferent even when you lose your temper with them – “somos humanos, que espera usted?”). Abundant local Christmas Kitsch everywhere, impossible to escape from it. Crowds that slowly move along the streets oblivious to the rain, spilling out of bars or gathering in clusters to watch street performers. Overkill with Christmas lights in the streets. Smoke everywhere from the roast chestnut stands on every street corner. A shop window display: full of textiles draped to create folds. The whole scene framed by the window creating a "painting", an extraordinary painting. I am reading Eyes Of The Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa, one of those books that expresses so well what one has already thought and experienced in one´s own work – the eyes touch, all our senses, our whole body must be engaged in making or contemplating a painting. I am also reading Wittgenstein’s Nephew by Thomas Bernhard. I admire Thomas Bernhard greatly – his style, his ferocious humour, his constant rant about Austria etc. I hope I can sleep tonight, in this vast hotel. Too much coffee today and too many petty thoughts in my head. Today has been uneventful. Another long lunch. A long siesta followed by a long walk. Tomorrow my journey home.

Snow covered mountains from the plane window.

Portrait of Thomas Bernhard by Joseph Gallus Rittenberg.

Folds in window display 1

Folds in window display 2.

Folds in window display 3.

View of a square in Málaga...the rain, the Christmas lights.

A market stall showing Christmas kitsch.

Wilhelm Sasnal, Cowboys 2 (2004), oil on canvas, 40x40cm.

A painting by Sophie Taeuber-Arp at the Museo Picasso.

Detail of "Saint Peter the hermit" by José de Ribera.

Rumination

2009-12-09T12:15:00.001+01:00

Can we learn something from form in painting and its processes, from how it inter-relates, transforms, disintergrates, re-forms ,opens up or closes up, its presentation etc?

Things read - Blaise Pascal

2009-12-09T12:12:00.001+01:00

Changing the figure, because of our weakness.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées: S484/L582

Things read - Michael Haneke

2009-12-09T12:09:00.001+01:00

“If you build an idea into an absolute, it becomes an ideology. And it helps those who have absolutely no possibility of defending themselves to follow this ideology in order to escape their misery. And that’s not a question of the fascism of the right.
It also counts for left-wing fascism and for religious fascism. You could make the same film (The White Ribbon) – in a completely different form of course – about the Islamists of today. There is always someone in a wretched situation who seizes the opportunity, through ideology, to avenge himself, to emerge from his misery and to rectify his life. In the name of a beautiful idea you can become a murderer”

Michael Haneke, the Austrian Film Director, as quoted by Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, 5 October 2009

Things Heard - Der Lindenbaum

2009-12-04T21:30:00.001+01:00

Things seen - Fergus Feehily

2009-11-25T19:03:00.005+01:00

Here are two works by Fergus Feehily shown recently at Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin:

The Hide
2009
Found frame, found
illustration, watercolour on
paper, wood, cloth and
screws
28.5 x 20 x 1.5cm
Courtesy the artist and
Green On Red Gallery,
Dublin

De Liefde
2009
Oil and acrylic on MDF
and wood, screws
21 x 16.2 x 1.5cm
Courtesy the artist and
Green On Red Gallery,
Dublin

Two new paintings...

2009-11-23T13:42:00.003+01:00

After You, 2009, oil on linen, 160x115cm

Ordunte, 2009, oil and lacquer on wood panel, 142x110cm

Painting...

2009-11-17T14:38:00.004+01:00

Antón Hurtado paid me a visit yesterday. He liked this painting: Passing, 2009, oil & lacquer on wood, 142x110cm, and wanted me to put an image of it on my blog. It has appeared in an earlier state and has undergone a few changes. It has been a very slow piece in the making...

En proceso...

2009-11-06T10:58:00.003+01:00

Hoy

2009-10-29T22:19:00.002+01:00

Some paintings I have been working on recently...

Drawings

2009-10-29T12:01:00.004+01:00

I recently had a number of drawings scanned. Here are two of them...

Natural History, 2009, coloured pencil & holes on paper, 32.5x25cm

SonBou - Night, 2007-09, coloured pencil on paper, 32.5x25cm

Things read...

2009-10-22T10:10:00.000+02:00

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Albert Einstein

Things seen - Robert Bordo

2009-10-19T23:13:00.002+02:00

Puddles [2009], oil on canvas, 40.6 x 51 cm

See his current exhibition at Mummery&Schnelle in London.

Düsseldorf

2009-10-19T15:21:00.025+02:00

The main railway station in Köln through the window of the train

Dusseldorf, Friday16^th. 9.30 am train to Dusseldorf. Cold again. Hard rain. Took a taxi at Dusseldorf station to the K21 museum to meet Josephine Kelliher my gallerist from Dublin. The taxi driver had no idea where the museum was. He finally left me at the Opera House (hard rain continues). From there I walked. Once I had met Josephine at K21 we saw the Wilhelm Sasnal exhibition. I couldn’t really take it seriously. The “bad” paintings were not bad enough to be convincing. What is “bad” painting anyway? At least, I could see none of the surprises that might arise from doing things in the “wrong” way….whatever that might be! Midday: We met Christoph Wedding, one of the artists who has curated Alpha at the main entrance. A drive out to the suburbs to Pilot Projekt für Kunst to see the second part of the show there. Very nice installation. Michael Müller runs the space. He told me that that there are an estimated 10.000 artists in the Dusseldorf area. Very pleasant afternoon. Lunch with Christoph, Hannes Norberg, Josephine, Jürgen Meyer, and Michael Müller and his partner. I had potato dumplings and beef stewed in what seemed to be vinegar, raisons and beer! Later back to Cologne on an "express train" (just 20 minutes) to see Alpha at Drei Raum für Gegenwartskunst where my painting is installed. Later, two or three openings at other galleries. Here are some installation views of Alpha in both venues, images courtesy of Drei Raum für Gegenwartskunst:

Patrick Michael Fitzgerald

Sebastian Freytag & Martina Klein

Christoph Wedding, Andreas Fischer, Petra Herzog

Petra Herzog & Sebastian Freytag

Christoph Wedding

Paul Drissen

Jane Harris

Isabelle Borges & Feliz Schramm (pilot projekt für kunst e.V., Düsseldorf)

Isabelle Borges, Felix Schramm & Jürgen Meyer (pilot projekt für kunst e.V., Düsseldorf)

Lorenzo Pompa, Hannes Norberg, Isabelle Borges & Felix Schramm (pilot projekt für kunst e.V., Düsseldorf)

Complete images of the show at Drei Raum für Gegenwartskunst & Pilot Projekt für Kunst.

Kolumba

2009-10-19T12:44:00.012+02:00

Cologne, Thursday 15^th. Cold wind. I leave the Chelsea Hotel where apparently, Martin Kippenberger & co used to go drinking in its bar. Nearly run over by a man in a suit on a bicycle. He seemed to think it was my fault and maybe he was right. “Curried sausage with french fries covered in mayonnaise” standing at a bar table in a small cafe – could only eat a quarter of it. The day is bright -clear blue sky... but the shadows do not lose their impenetrable blackness throughout the day mirrowing the blackened towering forms of the Dom as it reaches into the heavens. Early afternoon in Kolumba. I was somewhat sceptical before my visit (the initial hype) but was quite moved, especially in the space where the wooden walkway zigzags over the archaeological remains of the gothic church. The perforations in the exterior walls (distorting and fragmenting the internal and external sound in a beautiful way). A lot to reflect on – the dialogue with the art of the past, exhibiting contemporary art alongside other artefacts, all the problems this might embody, the building itself…how does one define it? It is not a conventional museum and in ways I have not yet assimilated it seems to be imbued with Catholicism: the almost fetishistic treatment of objects and details adhering to a certain idea of beauty. The question is, whether new unexpected meanings can be generated in these contexts and whether the divergence from conventional critical/historical presentations can throw new light on the nature of artefacts and their meanings. I accept the historical aspect of everything we do - but maybe what is most valuable about art is its non-historical qualities (not necessarily universal qualities)...those aspects which allow the work to have a different resonance at different times and places.

Peter Zumthor’s building itself does not leave one indifferent. Here are a few images I took, the perforations in the exterior walls, the zigzag walkway, a display of relics, shadows on the floor made by a display case and some trees in an exterior area:

Köln

2009-10-13T19:06:00.003+02:00

Off to Köln for a few days tomorrow. Hope to report from there and post some images of the ALPHA group show. In the meantime, two fragments...an image taken the other day: an older painting (slightly reworked) and a very new painting (reds and magenta)...

Archimedean point

2009-10-04T16:58:00.001+02:00

Hoy...

2009-09-29T15:47:00.004+02:00