Scribbling oddities: Tony Fitzpatrick’s strange and magical beasts show dedication to his craft
The work, on exhibit at GVSU through March 2 at the downtown campus, teeters between homage and sacrilege, revealing Fitzpatrick’s insight into humanity’s murkiest nature.
Reared upon his haunches, King Stinky belches an amoebic cloud while posing for his Tarot Card portrait. To his side a prickly centaur toasts to his longevity, and a mutant bee-ant serenades His Highness by violin. In the distance terrified matches, heads aflame, scurry about. A sobbing balloon floats above, shedding cartoon tears into the monstrous skunk’s crude crown.
Since childhood, Tony Fitzpatrick has been scribbling oddities, and the prints included in Grand Valley State University (GVSU)’s “Strange and Magical Beasts” show the artist’s lifelong dedication to his craft. Compositions are packed from edge to edge. Among the chaos are centipede boys, drunken skeletons, queen bees (literally, pissed off women with fat bee bodies), back alley boxers, voluptuous mermaids, and caged animals. The outlandish narratives belie a young boy fattened upon upon Mad Magazines, Archie Comics, and mythic lore.
Many of the etchings are small, relic-like, and hint at Fitzpatrick’s deeply ingrained Catholic upbringing, as do the recurring religious symbols and iconic arrangements. The works teeter between homage and sacrilege, juxtaposing angels and praying hands with sea serpents and dead snowmen. But beyond layers of irreverent humor, these small prints reveal Fitzpatrick’s insight into humanity’s murkiest nature.
In “The Leviathan Driven Mad” a shark-headed fish creature squirms upon a sacrificial stone, its body lined with gooey gills. Pain swarms amid pulsating stars, ballpoint pin swirls, peacocks, clowns, and ghosts. One of those damned queen bees looks on mercilessly. A fellow fish-man heroically hails the suffering protagonist while a bare breasted sailor boy is too self-consumed to notice its agony. To the right, Harvey’s silhouette gently touches one of the creature’s fins.
Fitzpatrick represents the biblical monster as the last of its kind. Ripped from its native sea, the Leviathan is powerless and scared. Its magnitude is only in proportion to its extinction. While I want to analyze this as a metaphor for the dismissal of bygone beliefs, I’m too seduced by the fantastic imagery. Eye candy conquers my ability to philosophize.
In “Transformation of the Junk Whore” Fitzgerald concocts the sickly realm of addiction with believability. A giant, angry, heroin-craving woman straddles a flaming pothole. Irritating yellow hues permeate the scene. She glares at us with bulbous black insect eyes, and a hornet butt protrudes from her pin-up leotard. A syringe with Mickey Mouse mittens teeters in her presence, accidentally leaking a little liquid from his needle. Smiley face finger tips peep out from eyeball infested clouds, crossword fragments levitate, and a hungry cheetah circles the mammoth wore from behind. Two clocks adorn the bottom corners: a countdown until the next rush or a reminder of mortality?
It’s these menacing undercurrents that bolster Tony Fitzpatrick’s outlandish prints. All of the ingredients are there for nonsensical storybook adventures, but once we begin to decipher his coded language, we recognize the sinister nature of his work.
Fitzpatrick clothes our fears, lusts, prejudices and self-centeredness with child-like fun. The moment we begin to enjoy these fantastical narratives, we are startled to recognize a familiar ugliness buried within.
Visit the work
On exhibit through March 2
West Wall Gallery, L. V. Eberhard Center
GVSU Downtown Campus
Future exhibition scheduled:
Kirkhof Center Gallery, GVSU Allendale campus
November 2, 2018-March 1, 2019
