MOSTLY WOMEN. Works in Progress.2013

Oil on canvas. 60″x30″

MOSTLY WOMEN.

Mostly Women. Works in Progress. Secret stuff.

Please note: No images in this section to be reproduced in any shape or form without the written permission of Jim FitzPatrick.

I am a working artist and I paint or draw every day as I have all my life.

Almost all the work I produce is drawn from the strands of  my own personal obsessions; my graphic art, my Celtic work and my long running ‘Mostly Women’ project.

Those of you familiar with my art will remember the more iconic works I have produced over the last couple of decades; the red and black Che Guevara Poster of 1968, now regarded as one of the most important and iconic graphic art works of the last century; my album cover artwork for Irish band Thin Lizzy -and the iconic Black Rose cover -most who know my work will be familiar with that one too, and finally my Celtic artwork which almost suffers from familiarity here in Ireland.

This blog will be devoted to new work and focus more on my ongoing ‘Mostly Women’ project, started back in 1990, recording the lives and beauty of my female friends and acquaintances with particular emphasis on artworks related to my friend and muse Audi (Audrey Nugent), who inspired me to take this course of action over twenty years ago.

Of course I love producing graphic art and my more well-known Celtic Art -and the myths and Legends of Ireland that inspire and inform these works -but an artist cannot stand still and with a wild monkey-mind that leaps from tree to tree I have no choice but to follow the erratic and often errant muse wherever she takes me.

The sort of work I will post here will be primarily works-in -progress. Don’t be fooled, many of these works have been ‘in progress’ for far too long; I have an attic and hall full of unfinished canvases and folders of drawings in their hundreds, most well and truly completed but with a good percentage still needing more than just finishing.

One of the primary reasons for using this blog to publish this unknown work is to pressure myself to finish each older work rather than keep starting new works. What better way than to announce my intentions and use the blog to force myself to actually see these works through from start to finish. I am sure I am not alone with this problem, unfinished works litter the ouvre of so many artists and sometimes they actually look better unfinished so I will also allow myself a cut-of point that may allow me a little latitude. It’s not as if the world awaits the results of this, my attempt to create a substantial body of new work, but it helps to focus my attention and complete works that I feel deserve completion.

Right now I am back working on a triptych I really always have wanted to finish properly, entitled ‘Girl in a Blue Dress’, modelled by a beautiful friend of mine back in 2007. Conceived and begun in 2007, then abandoned due to various factors not worth getting into here, it was always my intention one day to sort them out and actually finish them but with the beautiful weather in Ireland at this present time I used these as an excuse to set up my easel on the balcony and started back on them this month, on the 21st May 2013.

Here they are as I left them in 2007. I will update as I proceed and show the results only here for the present.

Again I must insist that they are NOT to be reproduced without my written permission. When the time comes I will be quite happy to publish them but not right now.

Jim FitzPatrick.May 2013.