Pat Fitzgerald: Left/Right

June, 03, 2011 , by Brennin

Patrick FitzGerald is a local artist and associate professor of Art and Design at NC State. He creates his art with both traditional and digital mediums, using paint as well as software programs to create interactive pieces that challenge the viewer to participate in the interpretation of the artwork.

New Raleigh: Can you describe the process each piece goes through?

Patrick FitzGerald: The theme of this series is right/left brain, like the analytical and spatial brain. So the first show is the spatial brain so its really abstract pieces, but I’m very comfortable free forming using software packages like Illustrator or Photoshop; I begin to create a series of accents and layering those assets on top of each other so I can move things around and readjust them. Unlike painting I change stacking order and scale and transparency, but it’s basically a painter’s eye in a digital world. When I compose these images, I work both statically and kinetically.

NR: Where did you get the inspiration to create in a digital medium?

PF: If there’s any downside to a digital medium, it’s that it’s cold, you have to talk its language, and its got technical hurdles you gotta jump through, but it has so many features once you get comfortable with it. You can change your mind on the fly, you can take crazy chances that you can’t do with traditional painting because there’s no repercussions to your mistakes. You got your old friend “command Z” to back up and try again. Basically, it allows you to be very experimental without suffering the repercussions that you would in linear media.

NR: What do you feel technology’s place in art is?

PF: Every generation has tools that are unique to it and in our generation I don’t think it can be denied that digital media is a form of communication, expression, and a transmission device- they’re all kind of integrated into the way we live and work. Basically I have sort of a “painter meets the digital age” type of approach to things. Digital tools don’t replace the eye of an artist and they don’t replace the talent of the artist.

NR: Do you feel that using a digital format challenges the uniqueness of each piece?

PF: Excellent question. One definition of an artifact is that it’s unique and I struggle with that idea, but I also know that there’s an infinite number of ways that you can mix these medias because they’re in layers and they have all these features. I just continue to change and turn them in the computer before I print the larger pieces. The other thing that I do, because I do like the idea of a unique artifact, is I paint on top of them and put hot wax on top of them and turn them into objects as well. The digital component is part of the process, but it’s not the entire process.

NR: What kinds of themes are you going for in your artwork?

PF: I think consciously or unconsciously, if you’re working all the time, you’ll express something that’s sort of in the air. Through happenstance or serendipity, these pieces that are on the wall have something to do with nature and catastrophe, like the tsunami- the force and power of nature and the suffering of those people. There’s one piece that’s called the “Sendai Butterflies”, and it has what could be interpreted as butterflies emerging from this landscape, which could be interpreted in a number of ways, but it could be a tribute to the people who suffered in that catastrophe. The second series that I’m doing is called “Storyboards” and that’s the analytical, left side of the brain. The storyboards are a series of drawings that emerge from the dozens of drawing notebooks that I keep and I scan those in at a high resolution and then I start to paint and color them in the computer and then I’ll arrange them in sort of a comic book or graphic novel format. That may or may not make sense to people, but the idea is that people can participate in the ownership of these stories because when they look at these storyboards they have to conjure what that story might be. That idea of audience participation is a theme that I really like to promote in my creative process.

Left/Right opens at Rebus Works tonight with a second part opening July 1st.