Jack Fitzgerald

Jack Fitzgerald is a Canterbury-based painter and printmaker. His work essentially explores themes of belonging, change, social history and the emotional ties we have to landscapes. Since leaving school, he has combined his artistic work with first studying and now teaching music.

Jack’s first exhibition shortly after school was with the Royal Society of Marine Artists at the Mall Galleries. Since then, he has 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.

His 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. He tends to avoid preliminary drawings, preferring to respond more intuitively to the various surfaces to help define the character and meaning of the piece. In many cases, his paitnings incorporate elements of mixed media to provoke associations between the landscapes and the social histories they evoke.

Prints are usually made after he has depicted a scene through painting or drawing, making it a commentary on the place depicted and on his original artistic response. At present he has 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 he takes with his paintings.

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