Morgan Fitzsimons
Morgan was born in the north of England in 1939. Drawing and painting since early childhood, her love of art was encouraged by a young art mistress at the age of 11 who urged her on to study the arts. Morgan went on to Liverpool University where she obtained an N.D.D., A.T.D. and B.A.
Morgan has lived in a variety of places including Lancashire, Shropshire, Merseyside, North Wales, London and Peterborough and has spent a good deal of time overseas. At 21 she painted in the Place de Tetre with other students and exhibited with artists along the Seine. While in France she was inspired by the woods at Fontainebleau and the palace at Versailles. In more recent years she has spent time in Africa and U.S.A.
Morgan was a teacher for twenty years and Head of Special Needs. She has a passion for knowledge and a love of books and while working as a teacher she wrote and illustrated for several publishers. Her physical disability and other problems led her to retire from teaching to concentrate on other things. Since then, she has designed and illustrated for various publishers and manufacturers. She has painted and exhibted in the UK and overseas.

"As an artist I was greatly inspired by Alphonse Maria Mucha of the Art Nouveaux period and the Pre Raphaelites. I always loved the romance in art and words of poets also inspired me to paint. I love John Clare's poems. He was the Peterborough poet, contemporary with Shelley but his poem of the skylark gave me an image to paint that Shelley's poem never quite inspired for me.

Words such as Tennyson's Lady of Shallot and Edgar Alan Poe's Annabel Lee sent me scurrying for paints and brush. But my favourite inspiration was artist Jim Fitzpatrick who was also a fan of Mucha. Reading Gregory, Charlotte Guest and Yeats and finding Fitzpatrick's work sent me on the trail of Celtic and Arthurian legend. The summit of all praise for me was when I had a card from Jim Fitzpatrick in which he praised my work and was flattered I saw him as my mentor as much as he saw Mucha as his. I still prefer Fitzpatrick's work which was created before we had today's digital magic.

I myself still prefer to paint with brush and paint but I can see the artistic and aesthetic merit in the work of artists such as Jason Engles. My daughter Kat is a brilliant digital artist and I love some of the images she creates using some of my works and some of her own. I could never catch up with the skills required in using computer graphic techniques, I am still reliant on the skill of my hand and eye wielding the brush and the pen to create my work and I encourage all those who can not to neglect that skill in favour of technology but to develop both aspects."

Morgan Fitzsimons