Helen Fitzgerald - Water Colour Wildlife Artist
Helen Fitzgerald was born in Sydney in 1945 into an artistic family. She began painting as a young child in her mother's studio in Northwood. In 1963 she studied under Phyllis Sbillito, and later under Lloyd Rees, Raymond Waklin and John Santry at Sydney University. At 19, her painting City Road was hung in the Wynn Art Show at Sydney Art Gallery.

In 1968 after teaching art at Kambala School in Sydney, Helen travelled to Europe and went to Papua New Guinea in 1971, painting in and around Lae. In 1973 Helen accepted a teaching position at the Canberra School of Art. She has taught in Canberra region for 25 years with TAFE and at Canberra University. In the last 4 years she has conducted a number of courses and her fifth book of illustrations A Field guide to Australia's Alpine flowers is now released.

Helen is married and lives with her husband and two sons in a bush setting outside Queanbeyan.

When painting Helen commences her work with a rough sketch to help her establish the final composition. She than analyses this to make sure the work is balanced. The pencil outline is done with an HB pencil on quality 300-gsm papers and then lifted with a kneadable rubber until just visible. Her next step is to add a background wash leaving the areas where the birds or animals are white. The next step in her work is to use the skin of a bird, obtained from a museum and actual foliage from an appropriate tree to commence painting in her subjects.

Working around the entire painting she gradually paints in the detailed work overlaying some of the earlier paints with stronger colours. Darker colours are added last also including shadows.

Included in Helen's reference materials is a wide range of wildflowers and plants as well as a freezer filled with dead birds usually as a result of road kills. Oh yes, I keep road kills in my freezer she says, Of course we've got a new freezer now, so most of the road kills are in the second freezer. Dead birds won't pose but they are vital to getting the colours exactly right. Colours like that are too subtle for film.

Fitzgerald is a water colourist, with a strong interest in native birds and wildlife. I have painted birds for over 10 years now, she says. Until then I painted the landscapes. I have always painted. My mother was an artist, and so pots of paint and all that has always been normal life for me.

Helen uses wild birds in her garden, photographs and dead bird’s specimens to create her delicate, finely detailed paintings of Galahs, parrots and magpies. A bit of birdseed is a cheap modeling fee, she says. I think it is the colours which draws me back to the birds, she says. They are just outrageous if you think about it. I mean, just think of the eastern Rosella. Then think if you were asked to put a bird together would you put purple next to lime green, next to red, next to blue, next to white - I don't think so. It is the sort of things kids would do.

Fitzgerald’s other great love is wildflowers. She and her naturalist husband, Ian Fraser has worked on several botanical books together. We go camping and I paint flowers while the family bushwalks. Her botanical illustrations are painstakingly created. I believe in accuracy, she says. I tend towards the scientific, and the technically correct. Your painting can get too tight if you only do the botanical painting, but I do enjoy it too. I can do these paintings quite quickly where as working on a bird painting is much slower. It is good o have that variety. It keeps me fresh. I like small things, and I like variety. And really I see infinite variety amongst flowers and birds.