Limerick, Ireland
Mike Fitzharris, Port, oil on wood, 49 x 59 cm

Mike Fitzharris

b. 1952, Ireland

Mike Fitzharris has travelled extensively. Others have travelled far. Mike ‘Fitz’ has literally travelled around the world. It is unlikely that any other subject other than landscape would suit him as a painter because he has passed through so many variations of that subject in his time.

Initially, Fitzharris’s landscapes seem emotive and loose. Paint is swished around in softened contours, stopped occasionally by blocks or lumps of collected colour. Line is used to push the eye around the work so a sense of pictorial movement is created. On closer inspection, these paintings are carefully planned. The works are a lot more determined that they first seem. The emotional surge in the way the paint is used can be deceptive. Often, things happen at the edge. This creates a visual tunnel which reinforces the notion of moving through a landscape.

Fitzharris’s paintings represent the attuned professionalism of the seasoned observer, the visual traveller on a continuous journey.

– Samuel Walsh, 1996

(Text: EV+A 1998 – Circus ZZ)

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