Artist Statement

This suite marks a change: produced with an initial layer of Venetian plaster, these pieces are more spontaneous, with less pigment on their surfaces. They retain a link to the body of gilded work in that each is ringed with a precious metal. Recalling work from the Renaissance in which gilded areas marked the sacred qualities of various personas, these gilded rings also enclose the paintings. They function as a distinctive marking, a nod toward the 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. What the Light Saw is a tribute to the restless shifting of light and energy. The other dimensions, other understanding present in this work are strengthened through the accompanying poetry, and the imagination it calls us to. The work embodies that aspect which carries us to the delineation, and unification between matter and spirit.
 

About The Artist

Karen Fitzgerald lives and works in NYC. She was born in 1956, and grew up on a dairy farm in central Wisconsin; and it is this early and close association with the natural world that threads through her work. Fitzgerald’s work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art, Islip Art Museum, Rahr-West Museum, Madison Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, the University of Arizona – Tucson, and the United Nations in NY. Her work has received funding from the Queens Community Arts Fund, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Women’s Studio Workshop. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center commissioned her, and her work resides at Montefiore Medical Center, and NYU Langone Medical Center, as well as in the permanent collection of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, and the Special Collections Libraries of Princeton, Berkeley, UW-Milwaukee, and William & Mary. She completed commissions at 2 Public Schools in Queens. She is a master teaching artist and works with a wide range of institutions.  She has taught at St. John’s University, Iona College, LIU–Post, and worked as education director for the Queens Symphony Orchestra. She earned an MFA from Hunter College, and an M.Ed. from Teachers College, Columbia University.