Following a somewhat nomadic upbringing, Cork-born artist Patrick Michael Fitzgerald has put down roots in the Basque Country, as Mark Joyce discovers.
Leaving the industrial city of Bilbao, heading west on the autovia BI-636. The road climbs steadily following the course of the river Cadagua into a mountainous hinterland of small factories and agricultural holdings, until you reach the town of Zalla. This is where the Irish painter Patrick Michael Fitzgerald has lived and worked for twenty years.
Fitzgerald was born and spent his early years in Cork, then the family moved to the UK, where he lived in a number of places.
Eleanor Flegg visits ceramicist Mark Campden’s Kilkenny studio to witness the process behind his gleaming table-ware
Paula Murphy examines the background to Oisín Kelly’s immortalization of Big Jim Larkin commissioned by the workers of Ireland
Technical developments enable artistic development’: John Behan reflects on the circumstances which spurred his move to sculpture, in conversation here with Brian McAvera