About

Nouva Photo

Hobo 23 (Gregory Fitzsimmons) is a self-taught artist living and working in Chicago.  In his mid-40s, Hobo 23 returned to school and graduated with a B.A. from The School for New Learning at DePaul University and a Master of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

I paint, make films, books and photographs. I spent about a decade immersed in studying Buddhism and other meditative practices and traditions, which infuses my work with a contemplative tone reflective of my daily approach to art-making and to living. My working practice is oriented towards exploring the continuing political, psychological and spiritual ramifications of living a very fragile and physically embodied life in a world that is increasingly saturated with disembodied data, opinions and propaganda. My still and moving images are assembled from taking tactile and analog forms of image-making and converting it to phantom-like digital pieces, experiments in a transverse autobiography, in which I recast memories and ephemera as plastic and malleable materials. I’m reinventing myself and my way of doing each day in the studio and in my walking, hiking and archival research. My paintings stand beside my lens-based pieces as palimpsest-drawn maps of my body’s movements — dairies of the subjective states within a nomadic pedestrian life.

CV