Patrick Michael Fitzgerald: Interview

Patrick Michael Fitzgerald, Consolidation, oil & collage on linen, 55 x 46 cm, 2
Patrick Michael Fitzgerald, Consolidation, oil & collage on linen, 55 x 46 cm, 2012 (courtesy of the artist)

Valerie Brennan interviews painter Patrick Michael Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald remarks: "My process has become very organic; reworking things, interweaving things... paintings can have their origins in the history of my own work or the wider history of art. Some small aspect or detail can be enough. A memory of something or even certain sensations. I also use my immediate surroundings and day-to-day life as a source. For me this is important, it’s a way of transforming it into something else. The everyday can have a blind weight to it; the challenge is how to open it up, break it open even. The marvellous is always close at hand and often overlooked. There is also an element of recycling; discarded paintings or studio debris can be incorporated into a work, something from nothing, a kind of radical humility."