Field of Light, 21.75”x21.75″, oil, Venetian plaster, 23k gold on yupo
This week we welcome Karen Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was born and raised on a dairy farm in the Midwest. It is this early, close relationship with the natural world that informs her work. Her work has been exhibited widely, including the Queens Museum of Art, Islip Art Museum, Rahr-West Museum, Madison Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, the United Nations in NYC, and many others. She has received grants from the Queens Community Arts Fund, the Greenwall Foundation and the Women’s Studio Workshop. Her work is in numerous private and public collections.
Roundness is indispensable to my visual thinking. It is the right container for what I am saying. Energies within our physical world are interconnected. I make them visible through references to phenomena in the natural world. I thin oil paint until it is fluid, building up layers to produce a luminous, subtle, surface. Gilding is included. This provides a distinctly other-worldly space.
Fog Light, Remembering Gay, 20″ diameter, mica, Venetian plaster with 12k gold on yupo, mounted on panel
I intend that the precious metals indicate something beyond our physical world, something metaphysical. Matter and spirit. These two entities have a long history of being deeply intertwined, and for good reason. As we engage with the world around us, we also sense something more than what our eyes can see. What that other dimension is has been the subject of many explorations in verbal language — poetry, philosophy, metaphysics — as well as in the visual language of art. That other dimension is rarely visible. Finding a way to translate that into visual language has been an essential commitment in my work as an artist. My recent work is a tribute to the restless shifting of light and energy. The other dimensions, other understanding present in this work are strengthened through the poetic connection, and the imagination it calls us to. This work embodies that aspect which carries us to the delineation, and unification between matter and spirit.
View more of Fitzgerald’s work on her website and follow her Instagram.
