ALEX ECHO
It was one very dark day in 2009, the world’s economy was in freefall, and so was I. Life challenged me from every possible angle, as the securities of love, family, health and wealth teetered on the edge. Faced with losing everything I had two choices: darkness or light. I chose the lighter path which found me with a paint pot in one hand and a wooden soup spoon in the other. That very day sparked the beginning of a journey, a journey into the self. I found myself stumbling and falling, groping and scratching my way along an artistic path; without correction, without knowledge, relying solely on the experience and sheer joy of creating each individual painting, design or idea. I had uncovered an unquenchable thirst for art again, art in its barest and purest form. My work is the connection to my inner self, my creation process is my life process - it is messy, it is accidental, it is studied, it is deliberate, it is searching and evolving - it is me. I have explored every possible form of art and looked to every possible inspiration, and yet this long process has always brought me back to nature, to beauty on the simplest plane. Mark Rothko once referred to colour as ‘merely an instrument’ and a tool with which to portray the depths of human emotion. I no longer have any desire to say anything with my work other than to project human emotion and to embody something of simple elemental beauty. My work transmutes bare and unrefined elements into something of splendour. My work confronts life, and manipulates and evolves to balance its inner disharmonies.
On that very day in 2009 my role appeared to me; my role as an alchemist.
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