Works from the Plattsburgh State Art Museum Collection Featured in Ireland

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PLATTSBURGH, NY (04/28/2009)(readMedia)-- Works from the Plattsburgh State Art Museum's permanent collection by Irish/American artist James Fitzgerald are being featured in a series of exhibitions hosted by the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny, County Donegal, Ireland.

This represents the first time that artwork from the college's permanent collection has been on loan overseas. The first exhibit, the Aranmore Drawings, will run through June 20 and will feature a large body of Fitzgerald's work, which deals with themes of Irish life. The second exhibit, Dance of the Fishing Boats - Fitzgerald in Donegal, will run from May 4 through May 30 and will offer a glimpse of life in Donegal as seen through the paintings and drawings of James Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald was born to an Irish family in Milton, Mass., in 1899. He studied at the Massachusetts School of Art from 1923 to 1924. Between 1923 and 1928, he sailed on fishing ships and freighters, eventually settling in Monterey, Calif., where he established a studio and became associated with a group of artists, authors and performers, including John Cage, Martha Graham, E.F. Ricketts and John Steinbeck.

During the last six years of his life, Fitzgerald made five extended trips to Ireland where he produced a large and integrated body of work dealing with themes of Irish life and the aesthetic and moral concerns of an artist. In addition to the "Irishness" present in the exhibit, the main characteristics of the Fitzgerald style are clearly defined - a delicate balance between story and abstraction, the strength of the gesture and the authority of the brush, a sure and clean definition of the subject and the structure of the work.

Fitzgerald died suddenly in 1971 on the island of Arranmore, County Donegal, Ireland.