Mike FitzGerald - Painter

Mike FitzGerald was born in Portsmouth, United Kingdom and grew up in the UK and Malta.

After being in an officer in the submarine service of the Royal Navy and later, obtaining a BA Hons degree in Fine Art, he moved into education and became Vice-Principal of Adult and Community Education in Southampton. 

In 1989, he moved with his wife the tapestry weaver, Suzanne FitzGerald and family to the Vendée, on the West coast of France and has worked and painted there ever since. 

His paintings speak to us of a spirit of place. Not the Roman idea of "genus loci", the protective spirit of a specific place but more the spirit of a place, the essence of it, the traces of cultures and peoples who have passed through and over a landscape. 

He has been inspired by his experiences and the landscapes of the places where he has lived: the New Forest, Dartmouth and Dartmoor, the French Atlantic Coast and its hinterland, the South of France. 

Mike in his studio

Mike's studio in the Vendée, West France

Here are some examples of his work, from some of those geographical areas. Enjoy!

DARTMOOR

These paintings were done from the memory of his experience as a young Naval Cadet in Royal Brittannia Naval College in Dartmouth and later visits to the area when he walked over the moor, sketching. 

His work process is to do many sketches and then work from them in the studio. The sketches seem to be wired directly to his visual memory: he paints what his inner eye captured, awoken by the image of the sketches. 

Pink house on the way up to the moor - oil

Rainbow over Dartmoor

Ste wall and sheep, Dartmoor

MALTA

As a child, Mike spent two years in Malta and was stationed there himsself during his years in the Navy. These paitings are from experiences of those times and also later visits. 

Malta - distant village and church

Maltese village and Cartesian well 1

Maltese village, stone wall and blossom

WEST COAST OF FRANCE

Wind turbines Bouin, Vendée

Mike at an exhibition of his work

PROVENCE

VENDEE LANDSCAPES

exhibition 2013

DUNGENESS

 These are details from a series of paintings done after a visit to the eerie beachscape of Dungeness on a cold day in December 2013.

Mike FitzGerald's working method

Mike’s working method is long-term. 

He visits a place, makes drawings, takes notes and then lets things ferment.

Later, sometimes years later, he’ll start to paint. After a while, he’ll recognise the structures as coming from something he’s already seen and will find the drawings he did so long before.

The paintings that appear have a strong feeling of “Sprit of Place” – that feeling that a site has lived through many layers of human experience and has been laid down into its fabric: the feeling that we are here in this place now, but many have passed before us and many will do so after. 

Without this sensation, there is no inspiration for Mike.

Training 

Mike trained at Wimbledon and Winchester Schools of Art and has lived and worked in West France since 1989. He paints in oil, gouache and watercolour in various formats. 

His work is mainly landscape and is inspired from the New Forest, Devon, Cumbria and Westmoreland, The Atlantic Coast of France and Provence.