Profile: Derek A Fitzsimons

Leinster Leader, Thursday, 11th February 1993 by Vicki Weller

"IF I am left to work away, then I'm quite comfortable; I don't have a lot of patience with people," Derek Fitzsimons comments almost (but not quite) apologetically, early in the conversation.
Now ranking among the top sculptors of Ireland and Europe, he has won several awards for his work and has been invited to work and exhibit abroad on many occasions, yet the hallmark of his approach is quiet dedication rather than any rush to expose his talents. Interviews are not really his thing. It takes a full hour for him to warm to his subject and then suddenly he smiles and says "it's okay when people actually listen." .
Now living and working at Kilbelin, just outside Newbridge, Derek Fitzsimons was born in Dublin and lived for a period in Kill. The move to Newbridge came after he realised that he would need to build a studio of his own to work in. "I was living, in a housing estate in Kill and I was hiring out places, to work, which isn't a satisfac-
tory approach in the longterm." .
He says he has been interested in art since the age of 13 but never got the chance to do anything about it, until he was 30. Now aged 40, he actually began to sculpt in 1985. A qualified draughtsman by profession, the decision to move into fulltime. sculpture "just came about" without any real conscious choice.
Working in stone and bronze, he 'started exhibiting at various Dublin shows, and his abilities were noticed very quickly.', He has been selected for the RHA exhibition - "for nearly ten years on the trot" and in 1987 was the winner of the Oireachtas Medal for sculpture.
In the same year, he won the Calor Kosangas prize for sculpture, for his first ever stone-carving, of a cat. His work has also been shown at Fern' Hill, Dublin, a privately owned gardens and sculpture park.
In 1988, the chance to take on a very, special commission was offered with, Dublin solicitor Ivor Fitzpatrick opened a new office block and asked for a bronze sculpture which would mark both, the opening and the Dublin millenium.

The result was a lifesize piece of street sculpture in bronze, of a child playing with a rope which she had attached to a lampost.

It is called 'Memories Of Mount Street' and recalls the days when Dublin's city centre was given more to the residential and the human, than to business life. The piece has captured the hearts of Dubliners like no other. "Dubliners have developed a real affection for the little figure at the lampost," said one review.

Derek Fitzsimons exhibits his own pride in the piece with a comment which displays a certain ironic realism: "It remains one of the few pieces of art in Dublin which has not been vandalised," he says.

He says he has been interested in art since the age of 13 but never got the chance to do anything about it, until he was 30.

During the international exhibition, Espace '91, his unusual piece depicting 'The King's Pillow' attracted enormous attention while an Irish Times commission for bronze statuettes of 'The Scrum Half' achieved the rare distinction of selling one hundred editions in six months. Each year, Derek sculpts the Digital Hall of Fame awards for rugby and these have gone all around the world.

Closer to home, it was Derek Fitzsimons who provided the magnificent limestone wall panel, 'The Fire Fighters' which adorns the wall of Co. Kildare's new firestation in Newbridge. "The water is carved in marble and I had wanted to continue this effect right into the reception area but Kildare Co. Council unfortunately ran out of money, so we had to switch the water off" says Derek with another flash of his wry humour.

There have been many commissions from business interests and his work is to be found in the Central Bank as well as in private collections in Ireland, the UK, Australia and the USA.

There has also been a good deal of travel, beginning with an invitation to an International Symposium in Stone in Bulgaria in 1988, when Derek worked in marble. The following year, he was the first European artist to work in Kazakhstan, in the former Soviet Union, when he spent 12 weeks there, working on a piece in local stone and feeling himself, for the first time, to be influenced by political atmosphere and motivation. "I called it the wall of bureaucracy and it is now being maintained by a local committee there."

At Mayen, West Germany, in 1991, there was some concern when the Irish sculptor arrived without the usual model or plan of his proposed contribution to a major exhibition. "Mayen is held every three years and there is a queue to get there, it's very commercially orientated and people can get very large commissions out of it. "

He worked in volcanic stone, carving a lifesize motor cycle out of the hardened ash and a road of lava. 'It's difficult material to work with, but beautiful when carved and polished." The Germans, with their own inherently organised approach, just watched.

Afterwards, an expert German writer commissioned to produce the book review-ing the Mayen symposium, remarked that Derek Fitzsimons had seemed to be doing battle with the stone. "When he seemed to have won, he appeared more content and approachable; you could talk to him then." His work proved to be the most admired piece in the exhibition.

You wouldn't imagine that he likes being watched while he works, though. "Time isn't important, what's important is feeling satisfied with what you have done. I have even destroyed things that I spent a lot of time on. In the end, you want to produce something that actually touches peoples' feelings, even in a negative way. I have seen people look away because you have touched on something that they don't want to think about. "

It's a lonely life, working up to fourteen hours a day, although there has to be a cer-tain amount of distraction for a man who is married with three small children.
Derek's wife Sheila is a teacher while their three sons, Owen, Mark and Jack, are aged from 6 years down to three months. "I like to make the children feel part of the work I am doing although it can be hard at times, especially when I go away for long periods.

In the near future, Derek will be departing for Israel, for a symposium at Ma'alot - Tarshiha, to which he is greatly looking forward. He has to pay a considerable portion of his own expenses, since he says he has "given up looking for sponsorship.

"One of the problems in this country is lack of support. Yes, you can live tax-exempt but it is very hard to get backing
otherwise." He admits to feeling at least a bit angered when he sees the Irish flag flying at exhibitions abroad, when he is par-ticipating.

"I tend to think of myself in international, rather than Irish terms, now. In this country you get the feeling that if the day comes when somebody somewhere else says that this or that artist or writer is one of the greatest, then suddenly it's marvellous that he's Irish. Up to then, nobody wants to know. But the fact is that it's hard to be a fulltime artist ..

 

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