Portrait, Artist: Baltimore's Erin Fitzpatrick

Before Mark Zuckerberg gave a new meaning to the word "stalking," before Snooki took a punch to the face, and before Charlie Sheen starting "winning," how did people engage in what has now become America's favorite pastime -- people-watching?

Well, there was painting. How else was one supposed to get a glimpse into Mona Lisa's life? It's not like you could find her on LinkedIn.

Now, Baltimore artist Erin Fitzpatrick is kicking it old-school, painting soulful portraits of the faces that make up the canvas of Charm City.

"With people, it's like my subject matter is unlimited," Fitzpatrick says. "And it's just interesting, really interesting to me to get to meet somebody for the first time maybe when I photograph them. I really quickly learn who they are."

And with one simple look at a piece of Fitzpatrick's art, the stories of the subject and the painter begin to emerge. Her impeccable eye for detail and proportions combined with a loose and expressive brushstroke make Fitzpatrick's pieces simultaneously unique and intriguing.

Growing up, art was always a part of Fitzpatrick's life, and when a high school teacher encouraged her to cultivate her talent, Fitzpatrick made the decision to get her undergraduate education at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

"I was working on portraits there too, but I was young and I didn't really know why I was doing it," she said. "I knew I was good at it, and the teachers liked my work and I almost always got A's, but even though the subject matter was similar, I don't think I had direction yet."

After graduating from MICA, Fitzpatrick returned to school for a degree in teaching and taught high school art for five years. Then, she made a bold choice.

"I decided to give up my real job and try to make it as an artist," she says, "because I thought I'd be disappointed if I didn't ever really try to do that."

Once she spent some time traveling, Fitzpatrick made painting her full-time occupation -- with or without booked shows and commissions.

It was during that time she found the purpose she had felt was lacking in college. Starting with her close friends as subjects and expanding into different circles of people, Fitzpatrick found that her portraits facilitated connections to people in Baltimore and into other cities. And these connections kept her interest piqued and provided her with the motivation to keep plugging away.

But working primarily as a portrait artist in the 21st century isn't without its challenges. Fitzpatrick waits tables on the side in Bolton Hill to supplement her painting income. Despite enthusiastic responses to her relatively affordable work, she says not everyone is willing to shell out the cash for an original oil painting.

Still, Fitzpatrick has found success, booking frequent shows and completing regular commissioned pieces. She credits the achievements she has made so far to having devoted the majority of her time to her art.

"One thing about Baltimore [is] there's not a lot of [fine art] going on," Fitzpatrick says. "If you're really working and you put your stuff out there online and you're showing, you can get press and you can get noticed; that's an opportunity you can have here. I think some people don't really realize that, but I've definitely found that to be the case. All I had to do was really start working hard, and you get attention for it. People know. 'Oh, you're that artist that does this.'"

Fitzpatrick remembers one night when she paid her tab at a local bar and the bartender recognized her name on the credit card, excited to meet the portrait artist in person. Fitzpatrick was surprised, but it isn't unexpected given the captivating nature of her portraits.

"I go back and forth between if it's important for everyone to recognize who the person is. I mean it'll look like them, but does it need to be somebody that everybody knows or does it need to be someone interesting looking? This girl Pam right here," she says, pointing to a portrait, "I've gotten a lot of attention for that piece, and I think it's not because it looks like Pam, but because she has a really neat look."

Fitzpatrick's process begins with a photo shoot that she can use for reference images. She primes and stains panels of birch wood then takes time to quickly block out the colors and figure out the proportions.

"That's part of the process too, the whole photo shoot and even if I don't know the person, trying to figure out how to show their personality in a subtle way," she says.

She expresses their personalities and her style with pencils, brushes, and oil paints, but these aren't her only media. Fitzpatrick has also modernized her fine art by giving it a varnish of blog posts and tweets.

She takes advantage of the networking opportunities available on Twitter, promotes her art on Flickr, and displays her portraits, both finished and in-progress, on her website, fitzbomb.com, along with her photographs, thoughts, and humor. Fitzpatrick calls Fitzbomb a "virtual exhibit" of "up-close people watching," a visual means of social networking.

For instance, a segment of the traffic on Fitzpatrick's website stemmed from Google searches for one of her more notable subjects, Victoria Legrand of indie rock's Beach House.

"Now that more people know what I'm doing, I'm not going to creep them out by saying, 'Hey, can I paint you?'" she says. "Painting people who do something, like other artists and musicians, it's cool, because people will come to my art because they're looking for information about that person.

"I was just like how can I get more people to look at this? And I had the idea that people want to look at themselves and they just want to spy on [each other]. It's the whole reason reality TV is popular, because you're kind of looking at real people, so I just started going out and taking photos."

What's next for Fitzpatrick?

A portrait show in Annapolis, a residency at the Vermont Studio, and perhaps a series that recalls Miami during the 1960s, an inspiration Fitzpatrick says she's been daydreaming about.

But mostly, Fitzpatrick says, there is an inexhaustible supply of subjects to paint, connections to make, and friendships to forge as she continues to build her visual social network.


Staci Wolfson is a Baltimore-born, NYU-educated writer and editor based in Charm City. In addition to BmoreMedia, you can read her writing on Patch.com and her Just for Kicks & Giggles soccer blog.


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Photos of Erin Fitzpatrick in her studio in Baltimore by Arianne Teeple