Dorothy Fitzgerald, “Committed to Memory,” March 25 – May 6, 2016

Exhibit Catalog, Tricia Butski and Dorothy Fitzgerald

Dorothy Fitzgerald’s works are emotional responses to her life as a woman, a mother, and an artist. For this exhibition, she continues to explore the female figure, merging representational elements with expressive abstraction. She includes imagery alluding to the feminine and female sexuality in a way mass media does not conventionally allow. She juxtaposes her own renderings of female figures, all of whom meet the viewer’s gaze directly, with commercial images of young women and girls used to sell a variety of products. Both her works on paper and on canvas combine found objects, text, marks, and personal symbols through which she challenges and re-orders this commercial narrative.

Many of the objects and images she chooses are deeply connected to the feminine. Needlework and textiles including price tags and copyrights allude to the undervaluing of such traditionally female handiwork. Quoting the world of commercial art, Fitzgerald’s artwork seduces with color, whispers through the use of line, twists and turns through layering, and yells with text. She uses images from a stockpile of memories that are often contradictory, reflecting the uncomfortable realities of life. Through fragmented images, symbols, and colors, Fitzgerald recalls a past both personal and universal.

Dorothy Fitzgerald lives and works in Lyndonville, NY, where she paints in a studio yurt she calls “Kansas” with Lake Ontario to the North and cornfields to the South. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions through Erie and Niagara County. She holds a MA from the State University College at Buffalo and a BS, State University College at Buffalo.