ABOUT BROOKE

 

Brooke Fitzsimons (b. Sydney) worked as a graphic designer in magazine production in Sydney for 10 years before she moved to London permanently. She has both a BA in Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art (2001), and a Masters in Research in Arts Practice, Chelsea College of Art, London (2013).

 

After completing her BA, she set up and worked in an artist-run studio and exhibition space in London – which ran from 2003 to 2012. She has exhibited in London and Sydney, and has paintings in private collections in UK, Europe and Australia.

 

Brooke now works at Excelsior Studios in Park Royal, London. She is part of an artist-led team establishing Park Royal Gallery, where the growing community of local artists and makers show in inclusive ‘open’ exhibitions in re-purposed warehouses in this industrial area.

 

 

 

Collecting printed images and her own photographs as references, Brooke starts with a tonal under painting, building up the colour and the images with transparent oil paint glazes. The human figure reduced to a silhouette, linear architectural forms, irregular natural shapes, luminous colours, are all borrowed from and used to represent the beauty of the physical world.

 

Working in layers with simple images allows her to make wholly new compositions. Her practice is influenced by a former career as a graphic designer in magazine production, knowledge of printing and photographic processes, yet made by hand with the most traditional of mediums - oil paint on linen. 

 

'I deliberately set up formal oppositions: abstract versus figurative; man-made versus natural; hard-edged versus soft-focused. Rather than making the painted surface either abstract (all about the painted surface) or figurative (a 'window' into a three dimensional space), my aim is to make the surface appear to be both at the same time; to provoke a 'play' between the two oppositions: so that abstraction and illusion are held in an oscillation, where neither is dominant. Then the surface becomes an active threshold  - an equivocal, playful field.' 

 

 

VIDEO /  IN THE STUDIO /   

a video by Yemi Oyato

 

 

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CURRICULUM VITAE

 

1979-83 

Trained as a graphic designer 

in magazine production 

at Australian Consolidated Press, 

Sydney, Australia.

 

1983 - 88 

Worked as a magazine Art Director;

subsequently as a Creative Director at 

Australian Consolidated Press 

on various publications.

 

1988

Moved to London.

 

1990 

Foundation in Fine Art, 

Heatherley School of Fine Art, 

London.

 

2001 

Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree 

in Fine Art Practice and Theory,

Chelsea College of Art, London.

 

2013 

Master of Research Arts Practice

Chelsea College of Art & Design,

University of the Arts London.