April Fitzpatrick
Jackson, Mississippi, native April Fitzpatrick is a visual artist, art therapist, and founder of Pineapples with Purpose.
Her artistic practice uses a root cause analysis and cultural lens to develop ideas for symbolic transformation taking a critical view of one’s Lebenswelt (life-world). She positions her artistic practice within Black psychology, exploring the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement as foundational guides and explorations of identity development within a racialised society.
Her use of the pineapple attempts to demystify the process of expelling racial trauma and uses the fruit’s symbolism to consider narratives of racial tension that have impacted self, family, and community.
She says, “I tell Black stories to centre voices that have been scattered, distorted, denied, hidden, and forbidden. My work integrates contemporary abstraction with experimental narrative to produce bold, edgy, and textured mixed media paintings. My work is visual research that performs a critical analysis using three theoretical frameworks: critical race theory, sociocultural theory, and symbolic interactionism to consider parallels between the commodification of pineapples and Black lives. I take a destination to the core exploring the impact of one fruit’s power, wealth, and status with specific attention to plantation slavery.”
From the information gathered, April contextualises the course of Black people’s identity and community development within a space and time, use of language and symbols to make sense of their worlds, and response to racial violence.
She shares, “My paintings are scattered stories, and the audience wrestles to digest it all. Viewers are left with this question: ‘Can we heal what we don’t reveal?’”
Before COVID, April’s project The Pineapple Metaphor: Expanding the Narrative was invited by Florida Agricultural and Mechanical Black Archives for a solo show. She has been included in group shows in New York and Miami. Most recently, she was selected by Ely Center of Contemporary Art for a 2021 virtual solo exhibit.
pineappleswithpurpose.com
Rooted Reflections