❒ Renaissance, Updated: Artist’s work, on display now in downtown gallery, evokes Italian masters

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Large canvases and a pair of triptych panels line the walls at Gallery 621, vividly evoked images that, while abstract, also have a somehow “familiar” feel.

The paintings, a series of richly colored, finely detailed images, seem to be just on the edge of the known — there are no faces, but bodies, or at least parts of bodies, are discernible. And they are striking in their supple, Baroque features — beautiful, yes, but with a mesmerizing edge.

In short, they move.

Concord-based artist David Fitzgerald, one of the newest members of Gallery 621, opened his new show “On the Edge of Beauty” in the downtown Benicia gallery last week. An artist’s reception will take place Jan. 25.

Much of the familiarity in Fitzgerald’s work comes from its inspiration in the Baroque and other classical periods. He said was encouraged by an art teacher to explore and innovate with the exaggerated movement and emotional intensity of the great works of the Italian Renaissance.

“During the Renaissance period, humanism sort of bloomed, and you have Michelangelo’s ‘David’ just standing there. But then the Reformation happened, and the Catholic Church, which is buying all of this art, said, ‘We can’t waste our money buying frivolous, intellectual stuff like that, we need hard-hitting, story art to show the masses what a great institution we are,’” said Fitzgerald, who joined Gallery 621 in October.

“So you get into all of these big paintings of biblical scenes with fists coming out of the canvas at you, and they’re built on a diagonal grid, with all of these interlocking circular forms.”

Fitzgerald started with the main shapes of some classical paintings. “I tried to see how the depth works, the contrast of light and dark, to get a dramatic eye movement, which I think is what is working here,” he said. “So that is what I am going for, is a feeling of drama, movement.

“I am looking for movement, not just around, but a feeling that you are coming in and out as you’re moving, seeing into depth and out to something closer to you. That is what is satisfying to me,” he said.

“Dimensionality is part of the movement within the composition.”

Though his works are abstract, Fitzgerald is always looking to make it look like a scene, like a classic painting or early modern art, or a meeting of the two. “So it’s not a non-objective style, totally. It’s abstraction of something. So I want to imply a narrative without providing one,” he said.

“What I’m trying to deliver to a viewer is a direct experience. I’m trying not to portray or represent anything, but to give it a direct experience of what this is.

“With enough of it that it can resonate with a person who has experience seeing art and seeing life, but it opens up the interpretation and meaning.”

If You Go
David Fitzgerald’s “On The Edge of Beauty” will run at Gallery 621 through Feb. 9. The artist’s reception will take place Jan. 25 from 5-8 p.m. Gallery 621 is at 621 First St.