About the artist

Artist Statement

"Fully enjoying what I do, I express myself freely, making my inner most thoughts and feelings visible through the use of paint."

Studio

During this current winter season, Alexis’ creative base is located deep in the Swedish mountains (fjällen). Here he will spend time skiing, enjoying the calm nature and allow inspiration to flow freely. His main studio is located in Stockholm, Sweden. He says:

"I want to express myself fully, allowing for my inner most thoughts, questions and feelings of expression to come to the surface. And maybe, hopefully, the art will spark a question or a feeling of how to live life in a way that brings you most joy. We all are seeking something, and I believe that seeking is one of peace and joy. Whatever we desire, it is always a reflection of the search for peace and joy. So the question then becomes; How do we find it?” 

Subjects

Subjects I enjoy to paint are people and animals that feel free and convey an inner strength and peace. Animals have a great way of conveying both these qualities and so do people. It is in their eyes, the way they carry their body, the grace they feel inside and which shines from within them to the world outside them. 

Bio

From early childhood Alexis mother taught him how to knit with yarn and he loved it. During high school in Sweden and Academy of Art University in San Francisco Alexis majored in fashion design and the art of creating clothes. His teachers where always great cheerleaders and really believed in his talent for fashion and design. In his late 20’s he had a deep desire to find his voice in drawing and painting and through the Milan Art Institute he was able to move in that direction and start to create fine art that expressed his inner visions.

In the future Alexis says he has different ideas of what he wants to do. One idea is that he would enjoy traveling around the world to inspiring places, stay for extended periods of time in each place getting to know the people and create new art. Another dream is to adopt a dog and live close to nature, enjoying the company of his friends and family while spending his days creating art.

Process

I love a new canvas, and the color red! The beginning is always so freeing and exciting. Anything here is possible and there are so many directions the painting can go with texture, colors, plenty of red, and materials used. In my spare time, when I’m going somewhere, I usually bring a tiny pocket-sized sketchbook and pencil and sketch people I see along the way. Since drawing with graphite is a big love of mine, I really enjoy drawing the subject first on the canvas before any paint touches its surface. What happens next is that I kind of go with the flow, and whatever idea comes to me, I do. Second-guessing yourself in the creative process is the killer of all creativity, so let’s just go with intuition and know that whatever happens, we always have the final stage of refining the painting to keep or remove all the little intuitive experiments that happened along the way.

As I move through the painting, at around the midpoint, when the painting is pretty much just a hot mess, that’s when I get most critical of what I’m making and ask myself how to save the painting from disaster. Will it make it? By this point, I know it’s time to turn the canvas around and paint upside down. You would be surprised how many paintings, or specific parts of a painting, I’ve painted with the canvas upside down! Why do I do it? Because it changes the painting from specific to abstract. If I’m painting a portrait and getting bummed out and judgmental that it’s not looking so good, turning the canvas around makes all that mental chatter go away, and I can find my way back into the land of abstraction and flow again.

And after all that, finally, it’s time for final touches and highlights. All of a sudden, all the different little marks and things and textures that happened along the way get married to one another, and in its own language it’s saying, “I’m done”. It’s powerful to witness when a painting comes together and seeing how everything relates to each other and makes it complete. Every painting is teaching me to trust the process. Just like life itself, we can’t know everything that will happen or the outcome of certain things or events. But trust the process, and eventually life will come together in a way you never even could have dreamed of before. ♡