Alex White - ArtWorks
Contemporary Landscapes, Figures, and Still-Lifes in Acrylic and Pastel

  Home     Paintings     Drawings     Artist Info     Contact
  Statement     Resume    

Art is an abstraction. Derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it...
- Gauguin

Artistic Statement

"Everybody needs beauty,” said the naturalist John Muir, and it is the natural beauty of California that inspires my artwork. In the tradition of California landscape painters, my work honors this special place and its unique light by using the landscape to express new ways of seeing color. I look for the balancing point where reality and abstraction meet, through the harmony of color and form.

My painting expresses the spiritual connection we have with nature. My hope is that the viewer will enter the painting, where the tangible will transform to a timeless experience – the work of art as meditation. I would like people to find in my paintings a place for renewal, a place to experience the joy of exquisite color and light.

The mediums I use are acrylic paints and soft pastels on various papers and canvas. For some works I also use a technique of acrylic underpainting or monoprint, with pastel drawing to finish. Sizes range from small drawings and prints, 8 x 10 inches, to large 4 x 6 foot paintings.

Color for me is a very primal experience. The colors I see come from the light, and the colors I make come from the earth. The art comes from the silence…

If we were not so single-minded
About keeping our lives moving
And for once could do nothing,
Perhaps a huge silence
Might interrupt this sadness
Of never knowing ourselves
And of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
As when everything appears dead
And later proves to be alive.

- Neruda