Debra Fitzsimmons
Portal to Enigma
January 17 - February 7, 2012
Reception:
Thursday January 19, 2012 6-8 PM
Press Release
Award-winning artist and educator Debra Fitzsimmons has a message that speaks through her remarkably expressive artwork. Using oil and mixed media, Fitzsimmons casts a spell on our attention, drawing us in with mysterious scenes of fractured faces and figures portending great significance. These powerful events and characters exist against a baroque surrealist landscape, as if the artist is weaving a modern mythology. Her paintings deal with social and political issues in an allegorical manner. Co-opting symbols is one of the important methods used to produce the defining narrative in each piece. Fitzsimmons employs iconic images of innocence, freedom, or wealth and then flips our preexisting ideas on their heads to create a new, foreboding, or even sinister response. Her compositions are fascinating and introspective, giving audiences pause as they decipher the complex meanings for themselves. We explore themes of individuality, motherhood, politics, and collective conscience. Her aim is to spur people “to think about social issues more systematically,” she explains, “to consider repercussions of choices… with thoughtful, civil, discourse.”
Debra Fitzsimmons lives in Mundelein, IL.
Artist Statement
I have created two short series that reflect Amera-Centric issues of the first decade of the 21st century; a period noted for polarized political perspectives. In the first series, “2000 and Ought,” oil paint is combined with augmenting multi-media, and represents personal debt, national debt, immigration, stem cell research, alternative inceptions and the wars. For “Betrothed” and “Out Out Damn Bombs-Bombs Away” people from various backgrounds with differing opinions were asked to write a short comment supporting their political viewpoint directly on the canvas. Other images contain collaged materials that utilize media as metaphor. The second series, “Tossed Baby Dolls,” represents an alarm for the care of our children. In preparation, I studied altar panel paintings from the Byzantine era – dark, depressing, hopeless images warning of dire consequences. This dark mood was lifted onto cluttered, tossed compositions. The limited pallet and strange doll images deliver unease and concern.
Invitation to the exhibition
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Artists in this exhibition
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