Dorian FitzGerald

Formal Gardens of Drummond Castle, current seat of the 28^th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, Nancy Jane Marie Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby (2013)

Ground floor, on the east wall of the Brock Pavilion.

"The immense, multi-panel work depicts the gardens of Drummond Castle, one of the finest extant examples of the formal European garden. The gardens and property have also remained in the possession of the Drummond family/clan, largely unbroken, for 500 years; it is the current seat of the 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, Nancy Jane Marie Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby. While the gardens, like most surviving stately homes, are available to view by the public on weekends, the viewpoint and unpopulated garden depicted in the painting might allow one to imagine the gardens as originally intended." - Dorian FitzGerald

Exhibition Information

The gallery is pleased to present a single, monumental new painting by Toronto artist Dorian Fitzgerald. A second solo exhibition of smaller paintings will open in mid-November. This work, several months in the making, spans twenty feet wide by seven feet high. Its title is "Formal Gardens of Drummond Castle, current seat of the 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, Nancy Jane Marie Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby." The painting depicts one of the finest extant examples of the European formal garden. The property in Scotland has remained in the hands of the Drummond family/clan largely unbroken since the 14th century while the garden itself dates to the 1630s. Like many surviving stately homes the garden is open to the public at weekends (although the castle remains private and inhabited) but the unpopulated view and elevated angle depicted by FitzGerald allows for a more original perspective of privilege and order. The painting was commissioned for the new Richard Ivey Building at the Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario. The $110 million, 270,000-square foot, Gold LEED certified building was designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects (HPA).

Biography

Dorian FitzGerald (b. 1975, Toronto) makes monumental paintings of materially excessive situations. The subject matter includes the dining room of Stefano Gabbana’s yacht; the throne room of the Queluz National Palace in Lisbon; table decorations for a party thrown by Oprah Winfrey for Sidney Poitier; a Fabergé Egg ornamented by a rose trellis; a Cartier bracelet and, most recently, an image of Elton John’s sunglasses collection at his estate in Old Windsor, England.

Each of the paintings has been made using acrylic paint and caulking in a slow, precise method that FitzGerald has refined in his studio over several years, although the total number of paintings made in this manner is less than fifteen, given their scale and complexity. The process involves researching suitable imagery, manipulating it with software, making a large-scale acetate transfer onto canvas and then using clear caulking to delineate areas of pure colour so that the image is built up slowly in a manner that resembles a kind of pointillism filtered into vector graphics.

Biography courtesy of Clint Roenisch Gallery