Hello! I’m Alex.

I’m a painter and printmaker from Fairbanks, Alaska, living on the Kenai Peninsula. I spent my twenties living in Texas and traveling the country while writing and performing music, and making a living in illustration, graphic design, and video production. As my interest in painting became an obsession, I taught myself to paint in oils by studying masterworks in books and museums. Never getting over my skepticism of becoming a great painter through the university system, I started with Van Gogh and worked backwards to Rembrandt, Velazquez, El Greco, and Titian. Everything I learned about the history of painting seemed to reinforce a clear pattern: as you go back in time, the works become more ambitious, more sincere, more impossible to emulate, more miraculous, and more in tune with the myths and universal stories that connect us.

In addition to my own seeking, my attitudes and working methods have been shaped by three main encounters: In 2017, I studied in Norway with the master painter Odd Nerdrum. Odd’s lifelong dedication to cultivating his own talent and achieving true sincerity in his work made a deep impression on me. I learned many things from Odd, including the value and joy of working from the live model. In 2018, I attended the Painting Best Practices workshop of George O’Hanlon and Tatiana Zaytseva. They helped me achieve an even deeper connection to the craft. I was already trying to scrub modern ideas from my paintings, now I had the tools to limit the 20th century influence in my paint and materials. Here I discovered the timeless joy of lead white. Then in 2019, I took a printmaking crash course with Joe Carr in Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley, which set me on the path to making etchings, a years-long dream of mine. My graphic work is now equally important to me as my paintings.

Today I’m painting and printing away in the woods of North Kenai. Thank you for checking out my work, and please sign up for my newsletter to get emails about new work, exhibitions, and videos.