Eric Fitzpatrick, perhaps the best-known artist in Roanoke, invites people to visit him in his South Roanoke studio and lets the public in every year during the Open Studios weekend. But he hasn’t had a gallery showing in a decade. That changed last weekend when Linda and Dorsey Taylor opened their LinDor Arts gallery at 306 First Street downtown. Fitzpatrick, inspired by sketches he drew on a trip to the French Quarter in New Orleans about five years ago, debuted his “Musicians Series” of paintings and mixed media there.
The Musicians Series will run through late October at the gallery, where Fitzpatrick’s works will be for sale. The images are colorful, vibrant and a bit edgy – like New Orleans itself perhaps. The works that include mixed media (Fitzpatrick collected scrap metal and other items over the last few years to use in the series) are his first foray into that genre.
“I got in to saving stuff around the house,” said Fitzpatrick, “and all of the sudden Krispy Kreme boxes started stacking up.” Styrofoam peanuts found their way into his paintings as well. Fitzpatrick studied sculpture at Virginia Tech and said, “It made sense to go 3-D. But I never did sculpture in the marketplace. I’m really digging it.”
The sketches he sat on for several years started to take on a radiant, powerful and “zingy” quality, said Fitzpatrick, once he started turning them into paintings. Fitzpatrick has been painting musicians in a more traditional manner for more than two decades but these renderings of New Orleans music makers just came out “wilder.” They are also larger than many of Fitzpatrick’s works; he calls it strength and “gutsy-ness. Trying to get funky in any way possible.” One painting features a drummer; Fitzpatrick drums in his spare time as a way to relax.
They are also more impressionistic than much of Fitzpatrick’s other work, in part because he painted them with his left hand – the natural right-hander learned to paint left-handed after he was in an accident and couldn’t use the other hand for a while. It took him about two years to finish the Musicians Series.
Walk down through the French Quarter and you’ll hear blues, Zydeco, rock n roll, jazz… “a wonderful sensory overload of sight and sound. I want that to be in these paintings. Everything you can taste [about New Orleans],” said Fitzpatrick, who greeted old friends and new admirers as LinDor Arts opened its doors last weekend. People were “buzzed up,” said Fitzpatrick after they saw his work. “I think its given them a lot of energy,” he chuckled. “The work is sort of reaching out to them.” He likes two-way dialogue with art patrons. “Artists want to communicate anyway. You want to know what people feel and think.”
Dorsey Taylor said the new gallery location had “delay after delay after delay” before they could open the doors less than two weeks ago. Having Fitzpatrick on board for the grand opening was “very special. I was very smart in picking him.” Dorsey saw Fitzpatrick working on the Musician Series last year in his home studio and thought it was “some of the best work he has ever done.”
Having his first gallery show in ten years at LinDor Arts was like “coming home,” noted Fitzpatrick. Dorsey Taylor had given Fitzpatrick his first one-man show back in 1976. Its not that Fitzpatrick has a big problem with gallery shows, it was just that he has chosen to market his well-known work mainly from the comfort of home. “[But] it was an honor to be asked to come back here and reopen the new gallery. Every now and then its special to come to a gallery setting and do a big show.” Fitzpatrick said it might be the best gallery space in Roanoke, comparable to something you might see in New York: “very uptown.”
By Gene Marrano
