I am an Irish surrealist-realism painter and experimental video artist. Both my mediums of paint and film influence each other equally. Avant-garde film is a major influence on my painting work, each premeditated brushstroke on canvas relaying its own particular message through ambiguous symbolism, just as I would construct the mise en scène for filmic sequence. My painting practice focuses on bridging the gap of modernism to fuse old with new, recalling the technical command of the Old Masters but with a distinctly contemporary unease. Each work is highly staged and ambiguous, charged with psychological tension. I use found images or my own photographic sources, in which I arrange the model, props, lighting and composition so that they are painting ready, adding a cinematic dimension to the work. By taking something that at first seems everyday and familiar, but then to deconstruct it like a scene from an alternate universe where alien rules apply, the subject matter’s unconventional compositions and cryptic narrative enable the audience to derive their own personal meaning from the work. I’m constantly aware of the possible effect on the viewer throughout the process of creation, the psychological impact of my work is what’s most important to me. This way of constructing a scene is also how I work in the medium of film. It acts as a visual diary projecting intimate parcels of self-reflection into details of current social concern, working perceptively to construct surreal worlds as intuitive responses to our world’s personality. Through film I explore forms of interpretation through manipulations of structure and reminiscent details, observing and illuminating the obscured ‘familiar,’ turning the everyday into the unexpected. https://cianafitzgerald.com/ https://www.instagram.com/salander.blue/