London-based multimedia artist Alexander James is part historian, part storyteller, and part artist. A graduate of Camberwell College of Arts, he has exhibited in London, Berlin, Paris, and New York — sharing his large-scale oil paintings with audiences who will no doubt spend days, weeks, or even months contemplating the work.
Gaining inspiration from museums as well as familial stories, he immerses himself in the fact and fiction of the past — combining history with present-day emotions for something contemporary and current. With pastel and vibrant hues, expressive brushstrokes, and a grandiosity of size, James interprets physical artefacts and generational memories onto the canvas. Captures feeling moments and the depths of his imagination, he lets the viewer into his world while prompting self-reflection and introspection.
Today marks the opening of Face to Face: A Celebration of Portraiture, a group exhibition at Marlborough Gallery. Coinciding with the re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery, the exhibit explores how the genre has been interpreted from the early 20th century to today. Showcasing fresh takes on portraiture, the pieces challenge ideas of identity, intimacy, representation, and status. Alexander James is one of the incredible artists featured, with his thought-provoking, jaw-dropping oil paintings.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Alexander James about his early love of collaging, his grandfather’s influence on his artistry, and creating a sense of movement through his work.
For more information on Alexander James, visit here.
Face to Face: A Celebration of Portraiture is currently on display at Marlborough Gallery, 6 Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4BY.
Now for the interview…
When did you start painting and when did you know you wanted to do it professionally?
Growing up, I was always a bit of a dreamer. I used to daydream a lot at school, and I went to a couple of different schools to find the right one, because I couldn’t connect to a normal system. So I went to this school just outside of London, and it was quite a relaxed approach where you didn’t wear a school uniform. It was amazing. They were very creative. And the studios were actually amazing. And they used to encourage you to paint and use the dark room so I found that access through that school at quite a young age. No one in my family is actually in the arts, but my grandfather used to love drawing and he used to love watching old western films. And I used to go to his on the weekends, and we would sketch still life objects and different things that he would pull apart. He had this amazing chessboard and we used to try to sketch the chess pieces, which were all ancient Roman depictions dating from BC. And we used to watch a lot of films together, too, and he loved taking photos so introduced me to a camera as well. I’ve always had this really big love for photography, almost before I fell into painting. But then it expanded and grew quite naturally. I think it opened up originally at school and then with my grandpa’s love, it just kept growing and growing.
That’s incredible and quite rare of your school.
They pushed the subjects that you needed to do well in, like maths, science, and English, but what they really pushed you in was what you were passionate about. And when I started cutting things out and putting things together, I just had a natural knack for it. I used to just get things and rip them apart and put them together. There was nothing else I was actually interested in doing. I was maybe 13 or 14 years old, but I just knew it felt right. It was the only thing I was happy doing.
How did that process of collaging when you were young adapt into your artistic approach today?
I think I just experimented quite young. So I was working across photography, collaging, drawing, and I was painting a little bit but not too much. When I left school, I did a foundation and then went to Camberwell in London and studied illustration. At the time I kind of just wanted to learn as much as I could. I think illustration was a great happy medium, because one week you’d get a brief for a storyboarding project and the next for a mixed media collage project. The first week was actually an animated project. So my brain was constantly working across all these different mediums — and then through that I just eventually, properly got to painting. As soon as we had to paint for a while, that was it. When I started painting, there was nothing that felt like it. I think why I love painting is it really facilitates every mood. I learned this now, not then, but I realised like, if you’re happy painting is great, if you’re sad or you’re depressed, painting is great. You can always paint and I think that really shows in the painting. I think maybe that’s why I enjoyed doing it the most, because you don’t need to be in a sort of mindset to do it. Although now I try to be in a certain mindset, when I was younger, it was something that I enjoyed doing at any given point. And I think it’s the thing I felt the most relaxed doing as well.
That emotion comes through so beautifully in your work, and I am particularly intrigued by how you translate “inherited emotions” onto the canvas. Can you talk a bit about this?
A lot of the narratives that come into my paintings are based on stories. A lot of my work is based on memories and historical points, not just in my life, but in my grandparents’ and life in general. My recent work has been influenced a lot by my great grandfather. He left Russia and Poland during the Second World War, and he moved to London and opened up a salon in East London by Aldgate East called Henry Salon. I only found this out a couple of years ago, which is crazy, because my grandfather told me. He’s almost like my last primary source of research, right? So he kind of filled me in on the story — and that my grandfather was a bit of an it man. And when he opened the salon, a lot of interesting characters, artists, musicians, colourful characters would come in, even local gangsters in the area, and it became like a bit of a hotspot. And then he opened a bar next door, and then another bar. During this really interesting time, he opened all these incredible spots. He was this interesting guy who I didn’t know, but who I’m connected to by blood. So I really was interested in that story, and that has really fueled a lot of what I paint. I started years ago, trying to research all these different characters that would go to his salon. And now it’s sort of taken multiple different directions since, but that was sort of the base of this big body of work I’ve been working on for the past two years.
Life is an interesting thing, because we’re here during this certain stage, but of course, there’s been so much past and there will be so much future. And whatever you leave behind will be relevant to the next generation
You combine history with the present state in such a beautiful way. How do you combine the two?
I have lots of notepads around the studio, which I’m always constantly jotting notes in. Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction or stories, I’m always writing new ideas. Sometimes they can lead straight onto the canvas. Sometimes it might lead to a few sketches. But usually it’s very brief. I don’t like anything to be too controlled before I work on the canvas — I need to make sure it’s as free and natural as it can be when I come to painting. But so the narratives come from these stories. Some are fiction, some are nonfiction, and there’s always many other reference points in my work. I love history, so maybe there will be a historical reference. Currently, I’ve been working on these paintings which have this repetitive leg, which is from a sculpture that I saw at the British Museum. It was something I saw many years ago, and it stuck with me from a young age, and now I’ve been examining it. I’m always going in there, looking at different sections. I’ve recently been looking at limestone sculptures from 500 BCE, and the texture and the grain of them. So there’s always added elements but I guess the base or the fundamentals of the work are from the writings — the stories about my grandfather, great grandfather, my own experiences, my own stories. It’s a concoction of everything.
You have some exciting exhibitions coming up! Face to Face: A Celebration of Portraiture is opening soon at the Marlborough Gallery and then I understand you have some other shows in the works? What can you tell us about these?
I had some amazing conversations with the director of Marlborough, who has come for a few studio visits over time. I was actually already working on a body of work, and through our conversations, it’s kind of taken a nice leap. It’s pretty wild, there’s some artists [in Face to Face] who I still research and researched at the beginning who got me into painting: [Francis] Bacon, [Alex] Katz, [Lucien] Freud, Henry Moore.
There will be a New York show and a show in Berlin. I’m in conversation with some other galleries as well. So it will be an exciting couple of years. I have found over time not to rush into anything. I’m just really focusing on the work, and when an exhibition feels right, then I’ll jump in. And other times I’ll just hold back. There’s no rush.
When you’re creating a body of work, do you have an image in mind of how you would like people to interact with it?
When painting the work, I’m not thinking about how it will be shown. I’m just trying to think about what it is I’m trying to achieve at that moment in time. But I definitely find it interesting when the painting is complete, and it goes into an exhibition. I love that part. Because it’s interesting to see how people engage. For me, as long as they feel something, wherever they love it or dislike it, I don’t mind. And there’s a lot of movement in my work, [conveying] the way I’ve looked at a lot of different stories in my life and things that have come to me in a fanatical sense with paintwork, colour choice, and layers. I never want it to feel still, and as long as something of that is captured, I’m happy.
Do you have a career highlight?
There are so many, but I’d say, I know that when I’m my happiest is when everything in the studio is going the way I want it to. I find that just pulls my life together. When there’s a flow there, I find there’s a flow in my day to day.
