Viva Lewes Issue #134 November 2017
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THIS MONTH’S COVER ARTIST:<br />
This month’s cover is by abstract<br />
painter and printmaker<br />
Alexander Johnson. Given the<br />
theme ‘Noir’, he created the<br />
firework-inspired image using<br />
silk screen ink, rolled onto<br />
black paper. “I like to combine<br />
the printmaking process and<br />
the painting process, and this<br />
seemed like the perfect opportunity.<br />
I think I did two or<br />
three different versions of the<br />
fireworks and kept painting out<br />
where I didn’t like them and<br />
doing it over, which is what I<br />
always do. I don’t start again, I<br />
leave the mistakes underneath,<br />
and hopefully a few of them will<br />
show through so people can see<br />
the working process.”<br />
Alexander operates from his<br />
studio in Laughton, where he’s<br />
been based for the past two<br />
years. “I’d been making figurative<br />
and quite commercial work<br />
up until about ten years ago,”<br />
he says. “But I’d had enough<br />
of making this ok work, that I<br />
could do quite well but I wasn’t<br />
really getting much out of. I decided<br />
I needed to make something<br />
that I liked myself, that<br />
I would put in my own house,<br />
and so I made a conscious decision<br />
to go more abstract, and I<br />
started by working from these<br />
aerial photographs that my father<br />
(pictured, right) had taken<br />
when he was a Spitfire pilot<br />
during the war.”<br />
“I’ve tended to work almost<br />
like a fashion designer in that<br />
I make collections, so I’ll be<br />
on one subject for two or three<br />
years and then it sort of exhausts<br />
itself and then I spend a bit of<br />
time looking around for something<br />
else to do. Six months<br />
after my partner and I moved<br />
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