Laura Fitzgerald: Why being an artist is similar to being a farmer
On her father’s farm, Laura Fitzgerald found surprising similarities with her own career.
In her wry and sometimes satirical take on the art world, Laura Fitzgerald's Crawford exhibition, entitled I Have Made a Place, draws attention to the difficult and insecure profession of the artist. The Kerry artist, who has returned to live and work in her native Inch, having spent years in Dublin, has created large-scale scroll drawings, videos with her own voiceovers, and striking bale forms with sound installations that keep the viewer engaged. The cylindrical bales, green cotton ones as well as pink ones, are a nod to her agricultural background. She draws comparisons between farming and the work of an artist.
Fitzgerald recalls annual visits to the mart with her father, a former beef cattle farmer, who is now retired. "Dad would be selling the weanlings. His whole earning structure was based on a certain date in October or November. If it wasn't a good day at the mart and if the beef price had gone down, there was disappointment and real concern about staying alive and bringing up the family in Ireland in the 90s."
