James Fitzsimmons received a BFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, and

an MFA from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College. His awards include a

Governor’s Scholarship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the

Charles G. Shaw Painting Award from Brooklyn College, and he is a two-time winner

of the Maryland Federation of Art’s Tilghman Award.  James’s work has been shown

in galleries throughout the Northeast and was most recently featured as part of the

Mitchell Gallery’s show A Lineage of American Perceptual Painters. He currently

teaches at Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland.

 Artist Statement

My love of objects goes back to childhood when the simplest of things would keep

me looking and wondering for hours. There could be any number of reasons for the

attraction, some of which would be size, shape, color, surface or texture, and if the

object had moving parts, all the better. My interest in objects has become more

intense with time and I find myself spending hours arranging them in some way in

order to satisfy a need for harmony, design and solidarity. I am aware of the fact that

many have a history unknown to me, and almost all come from different times and

places. This only increases their attractiveness. Construction of the still life has a

certain ritualistic quality to it, which lends itself well to the reverential aspect that

builds as a painting develops. My goal is to communicate this to the viewer.

         My other goal is to ensure an understanding of my place in a tradition that was

born in the Renaissance, which includes a holistic reverence for nature and the

mystery of life. I want to speak to my time as a modern artist steeped in the tradition

of painting. I have a desire to create the world as it might be, to understand the

underlying need for doing so and to be sympathetic to the desire to express this

need with paint in the twenty-first century.

I would like my art to be as powerful as a great work of architecture or musical

composition. Great works of art are something like icons for me; they possess a

soul. I would like my work to be the same.