In our fifth Meet-the-Artist feature, we interview Karen Fitzgerald, a Queens-based contemporary artist.
Portrait Courtesy of Ania Fedisz
Black Pearl
1. How would you describe your art?
I create contemporary work: it is physically round. I use fluid media—thinned oil paint, mica, watercolor. These layered surfaces are luminous and subtle. This way of working demands that I step back from my intentionality and trust the process, giving voice to the materials I am using. I incorporate gilding with precious metals as a way of adding to the “other worldly” quality I am seeking. 23k gold, 12k gold, silver, and other leaf are incorporated into the work sometimes as a ring at the outer edge, and often as a whole surface on which the painting is done. The use of gold leaf creates a dynamic quality that mimics the roil of energy we live with and within.
2. Where are you based, and does your location have any influence on your art?
Living and working in Woodside, Queens (NYC) is a good spot to inhabit. Several weeks ago I moved my studio, it is now next door to where I live. I can see my garden while I’m working, which has a Canadian weeping hemlock tree. Planted the year we moved into our house, that tree is now more than 30 years old, a grand dame of the garden. It’s hard to parse influence. I am certain that all things of gardens influence my work.
Energy Ocean
3. Did you know you wanted to be an artist as a child, and did you go to art school? If not, how did your art path develop?
I probably didn’t connect the dots when I was a child, but by the time I was in high school I knew I would study art. I was the first in my family to go to college. I earned a BFA from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, an MFA from Hunter College, and an M.Ed from Teachers College, Columbia University.
4. Did anyone else greatly influence your art – for example, a relative, another artist, a particular art era or movement, or a muse?
Along the way, I’ve been blessed over and over with wonderful teachers, supportive parents and siblings, a community of like-minded artists, and steady guidance from the ethereal realms.
Matter and Spirit
5. What is your perspective on museums and galleries in 2024? Can they be improved, and if so, how? Do you have a favorite museum?
Institutions can always be improved. There’s a great influx of new thinking at the museum level, prompted mostly by the pandemic of a few years back. I am very fond of the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in Long Island City.
6. What is your perspective on Artificial Intelligence and whether or not it can be used as a tool for artists. If it can be, how would it be used?
Artists are already incorporating AI into their work. I was in an exhibit last year that featured a work of AI. Done somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it made a strong point. I looked at it for quite some time. It had a very disquieting quality. The NFT market is waning – from my viewpoint, most artists shun it.
7. Knowing it’s impossible to choose a favorite piece (it’s like having to choose a favorite child), what is one of your pieces that you absolutely love?
Having a warm feeling towards new paintings is a common thing for me. It has to do with the new idea I was exploring or uncovering. Over time there is change. Some paintings also work their way into a sort of “pantheon.” This includes work I will never sell because it is a hallmark of one sort or another, or because my sense of it is that it’s a fabulously good painting!!
Matter Unfolding
8. Do you have a favorite artist or one you find inspiring?
Many artists fit this bill, writers as well, and musicians. I veer toward creatives who are speaking along similar conversational lines as my work. For example, I recently discovered Helen Anahita Wilson who lives and works in the UK. She is composing amazing music using audio information gleaned from plants. Collaborating with the voice of the plant kingdom is a powerful draw for me.
9. How do you see your work evolving? Do you have any specific goals, or do you follow your inspiration where it leads you?
The evolution of my work has its own trajectory. With hindsight, there are a few threads I can plot and see clearly. I believe each of us has an interior world, and an exterior world. Artists tend to show up for their interior conversation. They take their ideas to task and explore the conversations that develop around these thoughts, paradigms and concepts. Of course we also operate in the exterior world. I’m often very interested in that in-between space that occurs between the inner and outer.
10. If you weren’t an artist, what would you be instead?
A gardener or a farmer.
Pandora’s Bowl
11. What is the tough thing about being an artist, and what is the great aspect of it?
It’s often challenging to tell the world what I’m doing: what my thoughts are within the conversational unfolding of my oeuvre. I write about my work – on my website there are short descriptions of each piece having little to do with shop-talk processes and more to do with how the interior of the work connects with the exterior of the world. It’s so lovely to practice this language, (the visual language) to speak it with ease, to think and work within it.
12. What is your schedule as an artist… Do you work by day or night, or both, and do you work as long as you please or do you slate particular time frames for creating?
The early part of the day contains the most magic for me: I am an early riser. When I am not at a fabrication site, I’m usually in the studio by 7/7:30am. I work until 3 or 4pm. As with most creatives, I keep a journal nearby at all times to jot down ideas and make sketches.
Unfolding Matter
13. How do you market and promote your artwork or portfolio website?
Marketing takes many directions. I work with a young woman – she is my marketing director and keeps me visible in the jumble of social media. Sophia Zweifler’s work is stellar. We present work on Instagram, and have a robust sales history there. A friend (Deborah Barlow) and I began a project in 2021 on Instagram, @fairshareart. We host work that is priced at $450 or less, changing it every month. To date about 150 artists participate, and we’ve sold above $60,000 on the platform. One of the goals is to connect artists with new buyers and collectors: we do not charge a commission, nor do we ask for any fees from participating artists. Our project is modeled on Matthew Burrows’ work with @artistsupportpledge, begun during the pandemic. His success with this global initiative has been noted by the New York Times.
In 2021 I organized an artists’ collective, Spliced Connector group. We are hosted by Shim Art Network. At about 35 strong, I regularly curate group exhibits on Artsy.net to keep our work visible. Sales occur frequently through this presence on Artsy.net.
Since 2012 I have sent a newsletter to a broad range of recipients. It goes out every 3 weeks. I craft it to not only feature news and new, available work, but to also share some thoughts from the interior realm. You can join the group here: https://store.fitzgeraldart.com/contact. I also work with a few gallerists.
14. Do you have any exciting, heartening, disheartening, or alarming customer tales?
No.
Fog Light Remembering Gay
15. Is it sometimes tough to part with a piece you created because you put so much of yourself in it?
The purpose of making artwork is to put that conversation into the world. There are a handful of pieces that I have reserved that I will probably never sell. They represent a significant high point, or summarize a thought thread that I pursued for some time.
16. Do you gift loved ones and friends with art, or keep those realms separate and view it strictly as a business?
As part of my business practice, I give away one artwork every quarter. We advertise the giveaways on Instagram and through my newsletter. I also gift artwork to those who are close to me, as well as barter with it for services.
17. What do you want to tell readers about the art world?
The art world is broad and complex. I use the phrase, art world, to refer to the industry – the established institutions that make the arts their business. I use another phrase, the world of art, to refer to that which is not industry specific.
People are slowly learning to not be intimidated by the art world. They are learning that having art is not a luxury, and that really excellent work is affordable. It can be scary to learn to trust your own eyes, but gratifying when you do so. Building a collection of work that delights you will feed your whole person for a long time.
I wish readers to know that the visual language is deeply communicative. We swim in visual stuff every day – screens, print advertising; our cell phones feed us an unending stream of visuals. Yet when we can put our finger in the torrent and take moments to absorb something that interests us, the language begins to reveal itself as a richly communicative system. I won’t go into all the granular observations I’ve made over the years, but suffice to say, this language can communicate subtleties our words struggle to touch. It is a profound experience to partake in a conversation begun in marble some 2,000 years ago.
18. How did you choose the particular type of art you create over other types of art? Do you go through phases where you’ll try different mediums, sizes, styles of art or do you deep dive into the area you want to fully fathom?
When I was a young artist, I searched for a container that might hold the ideas I had about our world. The relationship of matter and spirit is at the heart of my work. The physicality of the earth is tangible and real. Another dimension is indelibly linked to that materiality, one that is experienced though it cannot be measured or delineated. That elusive relationship between matter and spirit has been explored extensively in verbal form—poetry, philosophy, metaphysics — and those texts are essential touchstones in my work. Finding forms to translate that awareness into visual language is an essential commitment in my work.
The language of form in these paintings connects the dots to the spiritual realm through the energy of all things physical. Energy is the bridge between the physical and the spiritual; it is the coin of our realm. Light, particularly, calls our senses to the presence of that which is metaphysical. This work is making space for the voice of spirit.
19. Where can readers purchase your art?
https://store.fitzgeraldart.com/
https://www.almaartandinteriors.com/karen-fitzgerald
https://artinres.com/artists/karen-fitzgerald
https://www.instagram.com/fairshareart/
I also welcome visitors to my studio to browse and buy work. Please reach out and make an appointment.
20. Do you have any insightful tips for emerging artists?
This is a tough field, an industry built on opacity and toxic business practices. Do your homework; learn and know art history in its depths. Focus on your work, and not on all the distractions available in the interstices of the industry. If you are averse to hard work, choose something else to focus on.
