The Authentic Inner Life of Things
Monhegan Island: Sunset August 27, 2022
The Cannery Row Circle was a group of poets dancers and painters living in Monterey CA during the 1920’s. Happening into this community by chance, painter James Fitzgerald (1899-1971) found camaraderie with John Steinbeck, fell in love with the Martha Graham dancer Pegs Mather, and garnered critical acclaim for his abstract landscapes which built a healthy collectorship for his work.
And in 1943 he walked away from it all to live on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine where the land sea and sky along with a smattering of other people, offered unvarnished living.
He traded in friendship love and fame for his great desire to capture the “authentic inner life of things.”
The rhythmic spirit of movement underlying the actual reality of things has always been the goal of the highest art. - James Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald’s work is relatively unknown. And he was completely Ok with this reality.
For him, reality was living his truth within nature.
Read more about James Fitzgerald in the Portland Press Herald.
James Fitzgerald, Storm Clouds, 1952, Chinese ink, charcoal, graphite
