Artist gives insight into lives of Bluewater staff (From News Shopper)

Artist gives insight into lives of Bluewater staff

1:08pm Wednesday 15th February 2012 in News By Jim Palmer

HAVE you ever given a second-thought about who just served you at your favourite store, or pondered what the guy cleaning the loos does in his spare time?

A semi-retired artist who works part-time at Bluewater has completed 25 portraits of the Greenhithe shopping centre staff to mark the opening of its events venue, Glow.

David Fitzgerald’s collages of a range of staff from the shop floor to the boardroom were exhibited in the Plaza dining area.

A commercial artist with studios in London for more than 30 years, Mr Fitzgerald, of Central Avenue in Welling, said: “Bluewater has lots of initiatives to do with team building, like mini seminars and trying to get to know people.

“I felt working here that you see people quite a lot but you only really know them by their first name, you don’t necessarily know what they do outside of Bluewater.

“This is a different way of doing it. I thought it would be interesting.”

Mr Fitzgerald, who has been a part-time host at Bluewater for seven years, said he found out a lot about his subjects and attached a short biography to each collage.

The father-of-one who met his wife Toi while living in Thailand, said: “They all had different backgrounds – one had been a bomb disposal officer in the army, you would never know what lives these people have had.

“People think you do an ordinary job and you have not had a life outside that but it is interesting to see what people have done.

“Myself, I had trials for Millwall Football Club and Kent cricket. I went to art school and exhibited at a number of galleries in London.”

Mr Fitzgerald said the work, which he started last year, had been well received. He said: “Some of them had never seen their portrait until the exhibition opened and they were absolutely amazed.”