Mixed Media
Miro invites you to experience a world of two entirely separate and unique painting styles – landscape paintings and her signature abstract brush stroke paintings. Art is an intrinsic part of Miro’s life having come from a family of artists. Both her parents were prominent Northwest artists. Her father, James FitzGerald was an accomplished sculptor who created bronze sculptures and monumental fountains throughout the United States and her mother, Margaret Tomkins, was an influential abstract painter in the Northwest.
Miro’s background includes a MFA from University of Washington, three full fellowships (the San Francisco Art Institute, Skowhegan School in Maine, the Yale School of Art), a one year Max Beckman Grant to the Brooklyn Museum School in New York and an Invitational Artist in Residence to the prestigious MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. She studied under renowned artists Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Jim Dine and Jacob Lawrence (painters) as well as Gabor Petredi (Printmaker) and Walker Evans (WPA photographer).
“My landscapes are composed of rich, impasto gestures utilizing palette knife and brush. I first seek out a composition on which to create the foundation of the painting while looking for the spark to carry the energy and direction through to completion. It may be the colors, textures or spatial contrasts, something vibrant that actually drives the painting. Many of the landscapes are Plein Air (painted outdoors) and reveal a more free and expressive contrast to the detailed, intricate style of the brush stroke paintings.
I began creating the color field brush stroke paintings during a year overland trip to India, Afghanistan, and Nepal in 1975. The technique was a response to the abstract expressionist styles of the 1960’s and a recognition of the advent of the computer age of the 1970’s. Sometimes I use a metronome to create a background cadence and in the spirit of jazz or ambient sound I relate to these works as meditations, a repetition of one entity – the brush stroke – to create the whole. It is an intricate process of patience and precision, creating patterns and movement.” ~ Miro FitzGerald
