Alex McIntyre

Late Light 2015, ink and gesso on board, 59 x 74cm

Alex McIntyre

www.alex-mcintyre.co.uk / alex@alex-mcintyre.co.uk / 07866 734 920

Artist Profile

“Before I saw your work, I felt tired and I just wanted to go home. Now, I would like to stay here. I feel energized and calm. I could stay here all night”.

Visitor to Alex McIntyre’s stand at The Other Art Fair, 2015

Alex McIntyre is an artist alumni at Digswell Arts (www.digswellartstrust.com) and member of Free Painters and Sculptors. She has held AIR positions with Middlesex University 2008-2010 (with whom she also completed a Masters in Fine art 2007), Brent Museum and Archives (2010-11), Wizard Present Production Company (2012) English National Ballet (2013), and Watford Museum 2014.  She has exhibited widely in the UK and has work in private collections in Europe. Recent exhibitions include, A Space Between at The Stone Space, 2015; The tenth edition of The Other Art Fair, London, 2015 and Art Fair East, Norwich, 2015. Through November 2015 to February 2016 she is exhibiting with Quercus Gallery in Bath.  Alex is co-director and co-founder of HertsCreation C.i.C working with the arts to make spaces for thought and innovation and also works as an independent practitioner and community artist.

Alex makes abstract landscapes using ink and gesso on wood. Her work is inspired by walking and running which enables the close, embodied observation of changes of light, land and sky connected with breath and movement. Whilst making in the studio she tries to re-capture an impression of a particular journey. The creative process then parallels the original journey resulting in a series of visual discoveries led by interactions with materials.  The completed works are a conversation between the pictorial surface, materials and the memory of movement and places. Recurring themes include explorations of space, light, movement and stillness, noise and silence.

After completing an English degree in 2004, Alex initially produced sculpture in fabric, clay and later, modeled and carved plaster. The process of making was physical and closely linked with aspects of drawing, each mark contributing to the sum impression of a piece. Initially fascinated by human interaction, and by our physical and embodied existence in the world, early works focused on the human figure. After moving to Hertfordshire from London in 2014, the figure danced out of her work. No longer surrounded by crowds and people, her subject emphasis shifted focus from the interiority of human relationships to an external connection with the world around her. This exploration of embodied seeing and being in the world is communicated through abstract landscapes referencing sky, land, weather and journeys.

Land and Sky, 2015, ink and gesso on board,120 x 56 x 2cm

Wet Morning, 2015,  Ink and gesso on board, 100 x 50cm