Frank Fitzgerald
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Frank Fitzgerald is an artist and teacher who lives in Lindenhurst and teaches art in Gurnee. He was born in Chicago in 1969 and raised in the northern suburb of Libertyville. From a young age Frank loved to draw and paint stories from his life and imagination. After studying art in high school Frank went on to major in painting and graphic design at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. While working in the page production department at the Daily Herald newspaper he decided to go back to school and earned a Masters in Fine Arts from Northwestern University in 1995.
Fitz's work uses lyrical figurative exploration combined with costuming and artifice to explore personal and communal relationships. Through the use of marks painting enables individuals to explore the meanings of their relationships with larger societal groups. It is through an expanded awareness and use of personal creativity that collectives can heal and renew themselves. Chicago Imagist figurative painting has a cartoony and irreverent side that has inspired Frank’s work. At times historical images and icons can be refashioned to evoke more personal and emphatic commentaries. Picasso, Miro, and Magritte are among other surreal figurative influences that are reflected in his paintings.
It was at Northwestern that Frank had the opportunity to work with Chicago Imagist painter Ed Paschke as both a teaching and studio assistant. During graduate school Frank focused his figurative artwork around the subject of play and further developed his cartoony surreal response to life. Ed introduced Frank to the under painting techniques of the old masters which he later incorporated into his own work starting with the Elephant Dreams series. Ed’s mentorship and friendship also helped start Frank towards the path of becoming an art teacher. After graduate school he began teaching art at Moraine Valley Community College and obtained his art education certification from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Since 1996 Frank has taught elementary art at Spaulding School in Gurnee and exhibited his artwork throughout the Midwest. He has also taught art to adults at The Art Center of Highland Park. In 2005 he worked with the center to coordinate a solo exhibition of his Elephant Dreams series at Starbuck’s Coffeehouse in Highland Park. Recently he has exhibited at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and his work was accepted into their permanent collection. In 1996 his collage Oklahoma City was chosen by juror Ed Paschke as the best in show of a figurative abstraction group exhibition at the Fine Arts and Humanities building in Chicago.