Autumn is harvest season and Keats’s ‘mellow fruitfulness’ has been playing in my mind for weeks; not applied to the natural world but used instead as a metaphor for human relationships. Since The Other Art Fair at the start of the month, I have been thinking a lot about abundance: how best to write about the richness of human relationships; their importance as part of the creative process; and my sense of gratitude during and after the fair.

I have spent recent months in comparative solitude, head down in the studio doing the work. The art lies for me not in the paintings themselves but in that addictive moment when someone else sees a painting and, through the lens of their own life story, provides the catalyst which conjures meaning. In those moments one finds mutual understanding and creative connection.

Art Fairs are unique and intense experiences. They are a strange ecosystem in which one has hundreds of interactions on a scale from ordinary to highly personal, intimate and raw.

As an artist on the stand when you first meet someone, that person is a comparative stranger. What happens over time is that those individuals, who were once strangers, become followers, clients, repeat collectors, friends. They enter and become part of a community.

At this fair I made many new connections (hello) and welcomed new collectors (thank you).

I was also visited by individuals who I think of as already comprising this creative and growing community. People who like and are following my work, collectors, friends and colleagues in the industry. This includes other artists, service providers, writers, curators and gallerists. These individuals made special trips and spent a long time on the stand engaging with the work, discussing changes in colour, technique and mood.

With one artist friend, I talked about what it means to survive as an artist, how one adapts and makes specific choices in order to continue to thrive. Reflecting on that conversation now, it strikes me that above everything, human relationships are what drive my practice. It is through this community that I personally gain a sense of belonging, nourishment and inspiration.

At a time of national and industry change, this fair felt like autumn – an abundant harvest where the bounty was community and connection. Long may we listen to each other and grow together.

Thank you all. X

I have been thinking a lot this year about process and subject matter and intention – oscillating between looser, more gestural works and tighter more illustrative depictions of landscape.

“Oh so you do clouds then” is an often heard remark as curious people walk into my studio. I don’t really encourage this but my door is normally open to maximise daylight and I am yet to get round to some signage. “Beware of the Artist” is increasingly tempting although I imagine I will eventually organise something slightly less grumpy sounding – I am partially tame afterall even when painting. (Side Note: guests are always welcomed by appointment).

I want to say – “I am trying to catch and communicate experiences of being in the world – to celebrate the dizzying glory, peace, everyday magic, or solace of it and the paintings just happen to be land and sky when you stand away from them. Up close they are skins of marks. Layers of time and a process of adding and removing.  Some are quiet, others loud. They are the thud of heart, mind and breath; the beat of feet. My intention is to invite you to pause and be and be immersed. To remember. To reconnect with your own experience of land, sky and weather… The moment of art for me is where you bring your meaning to the painting. I am entirely addicted to that transformation of a painting through your eyes.” But I suspect that most people sticking their heads into someone’s studio don’t want to have a ‘deep and meaningful’, nor be reminded of their own impermanence, and I try not to growl or howl at them.

The paintings evolve from a combination of visual experience as well as smell, touch, hearing and taste. I call this skin sense. The question is how one communicates a sense of air, sunlight and rain on skin; leaf mould, mist or the dry heat of summer crackling in your nostrils; the scree of a red kite, the clicks and chatters of swallows or the roar and rustle of leaves. In creating landscape or skyscape inspired works these elements seem even more important. They are not found in the literal depiction of the curve of a hill, or a specific scene. They are caught in the inbetween: the buzz of colour, the unsaid or obliterated, the layering of marks. They are completed by what the viewer brings to the painting of their own imagination and experience. I am not there yet, but each painting is a step on the journey getting closer (or sometimes further away) from intention.

I look forward to sharing new works with you at The Other Art Fair next week – 4-7 October. Here is a sneak peak…

This year I have been playing with a vertical landscape format – exploring a minimal snippet of land at the bottom of a painting and a vast expanse of sky leaping upwards. You have to view these pieces from a distance – or up close with your  head in the clouds.

Click on the links below to see video clips two of these – 150 x 100 x 3.5cm – (framed dimensions 154 x 104 x 5.5cm)

New vertical landscape- Breathe III, 2018. Part of the body of work I will launch @theotherartfair in Victoria House, London 22-25th March . . Ink and gesso on marine ply, 154 x 104 x 5.5 once framed. . . #alexmcintyre #Breathe2018 #inkandgesso #constructiondestruction #theotherartfair2018 #artistssellingdirecttopublic

A post shared by Alex McIntyre (@alexmcintyreartist) on Feb 8, 2018 at 2:31am PST

Wild Woman I. I think now finished. Will be @theotherartfair Victoria House 22-25 March (in the 2nd hang). . 110x150cm on birch ply with aluminium substrate. . #alexmcintyre #wildwoman #internationalwomenday #theotherartfair #victoriahouse #inkandgesso #artistsurfaces #constructiondestruction.

A post shared by Alex McIntyre (@alexmcintyreartist) on Mar 12, 2018 at 6:21am PDT

Gesso is rabbit skin glue and whiting (effectively chalk) which is made into a thick creamy liquid (soaking of glue + water baths + electric stoves are involved). I squeegee it onto the surface of a sealed wood panel and leave it to dry – repeating this process up to 7 times, often sanding in between each layer – although sometimes choosing not to.

I love gesso because every tiny bump or ridge or flaw responds. It is as though it remembers being a liquid and speaks through ink. I can carve it, sand it, push ink into it and lift it off. I don’t control the image – it evolves through a process of intuition and a willingness to destroy (to ‘kill the little darlings) in order to discover an essence of something else. I don’t know what this is until the painting ceases to irritate me and I no longer need to fight with it.

I first discovered traditional gesso ground not through art history (as perhaps I should have done), but instead, by experiencing the work of artist Rod McIntosh during a visit to his studio. His delicious surfaces, polished smooth with beeswax and milk, held an ink gesture that seemed at once both on the surface and yet embedded into the ‘being-ness’ of the art work.

At the time, I was making figurative sculpture using modelled and carved plaster  and wanted to translate the visceral sense of these works into drawings and paintings. I fell in love with gesso’s ability to hold and reveal the work as though from within itself. That was back in 2011 – ish. I played with indian ink + oil using gesso on board, with drawings, pencil on gesso, dancers, drawings of movement and gesture. Only a few pieces from this period remain unsold.

In  2014, I left London and at this point my practice changed. After 10 years working with the female figure she left (quite literally – danced out of a painting one day) and I was left with the unknown. My dreams were of landscape and sky so I followed them. Gesso became a companion in this continued visceral conversation between memory, lived experience,  and the desire to breathe.