Anthony Alexander

Anthony Alexander received his formal art instruction at the Ontario College of Art, where the focus was on an academic interpretation of the human figure. The idea was that you had to learn the fundamental rules of academic drawing and painting in order to understand how to break them.

For over 35 years, he has worked in the digital medium as an art director, with Photoshop being his primary image creation tool. He also explored this medium and how it could be applied to fine art, but a few years ago, he realized that he wasn’t satisfied with the process. Something was missing, and that something was working with traditional organic materials and reflected light, as opposed to projected light.

He shifted his method of creating art back to using acrylic paint and watercolours, and to drawing every opportunity that he could. He uses acrylics because of the many vibrant colours available and, unlike oils, their quick drying time and the ability to use water as a mixing medium. Another advantage to acrylics is that, in addition to being an opaque paint, they can also be treated as a transparent medium. In this application, they are similar to watercolours, but he still enjoys the spontaneity of watercolours and paints with them often for more non-representational subject matter and as a means to “stay loose.”