By Audrey Nugent

Fitzpatrick is an entirely self-taught artist and despite having no formal art training his work has succeeded in capturing the imagination of an international audience. His earliest memories of painting and drawing go back to his childhood, and growing up in Skerries in North County Dublin : "I was only four or five at the time and our house was right on the rocks by the sea. One afternoon there was a terrific storm. The sky turned black and the waves crashed against the rocks, lit only by flashes of lightning. My mother was absolutely terrified and stood back from the window but I was absolutely transfixed. There was a yacht bobbing up and down on the waves like a toy boat; the sail was ripped loose by the wind and the boat began to fill with water and capsize with the two men on board desperately trying to keep it upright. I could hear my mother praying as the yacht went down and the men bobbed about in the water like corks. Strangest of all was this round glowing shape that floated in a sort of zigzag above where the boat went down, leaving a kind of bright misty trail behind it. It hovered in mid-air for quite a while and then simply faded away. I learned sometime later that this phenomenon was known as ball lightning, and strangely enough I have never seen it since, despite my still living by the sea. After that the lifeboat appeared with a searchlight but the two men had drowned. Later as my mother was cooking dinner, I sneaked upstairs to my fathers room and helped myself to his paints and on a big sheet of paper produced the first painting I remember, of the lifeboat searching for the men. I can recall that painting exactly, even today, with its dark indigo background, bright smears of yellow coming from the searchlight with the ball lightning hanging overhead though in reality it was well gone by the time the lifeboat arrived. This was my first recorded use of artistic license...