ABOUT

Alexander Heaton is an English painter and printmaker based in London. Having spent his early years in North Yorkshire he moved to London and graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2005 with an honours degree in Fine Art.

He has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. Most notable recognition to date has included his solo show, The Secret of the Runes at the Residence Gallery London, which was selected to be in the Pulse Art Fair, Miami in 2011 to much critical acclaim. He has been shortlisted for the Marmite painting prize and has shown in The Future Can Wait, which was conceived as a complement to London’s Frieze. He has also participated in a number of other international art fairs including the 07 Projects Art Fair, London. The London Art Fair (2009 and 2011) with Contempory Art Projects, Aqua Art Fair, Miami (2008) with the Lounge Gallery. Alexander’s first solo show was The Horn that Matters (2007) at The Empire gallery.

Alexander recently won the Mountain Tracks Photography Prize and was given the chance to climb with world-renowned mountain guides in Zermatt. He successfully summated Monte Rosa, Switzerland’s highest peak, Castor, Pollux, and the Briethorn. The expedition also successfully raised a large sum for Cancer Research UK.

His work was published in Bant Magazine last year - Turkeys premier art monthly publication, The Sunday Times Magazine - article covering his show at the Empire Gallery in Vyner Street, Amelia’s Magazine covering his first solo show - The Horn that Matters, and a full page spread in Time Out whilst he was still studying at Saint Martins.

Furthermore, Alexander’s paintings are widely collected by both large corporations and personal collectors and are placed most notably in the following collections, Bourne Capital, Wellington Management, The Hollywood Art Collection Miami, Cognetas, The Austrian Alpine Club, Raheel Aslam Dubai, Nigel Gruneberg, and Simon Rumley the film director.

TEXT

Alexander Heaton. This young English artist is replete with ideas; he meticulously studies and researches his themes. He walks and climbs in the remotest places to cast an eye on his artistic prey – a lonely figure lured by mountains, Alpine skies and forbidding ravines. The paintings look out from the summits of mountains and contemplate the beyond. Through his canvases Heaton continues on the true Romantic journey, but in a very 21st-century way.

His recent works transports the viewer to hallucinatory and altered worlds. These are not real places, but are vignettes of sublime vistas he has experienced or sampled. His work exposes a common longing in us all to escape the modern urbane landscape and throw oneself whole heartedly into serene expanses, and witness at first hand awe-inspiring natural phenomena. However the work at times offers us a darker reality of complete desolation or abandonment at the ends of the world. This comes from Alexander’s own experiences as a mountaineer. In this way the work laments on our own mortality and strives to find salvation in our experience of the here and now.

Engaging with rugged nature is the driving force of his discipline, and this rigorous approach informs his stylish, distinctive and ever so slightly quirky takes on philosophy and the physical world. Heaton open-handedly shares his highly personal and quixotic notions of The Romantic with his audience. He enjoys playing with our expectations of landscape and fauna, and his powerful use of colour, shape and composition makes for memorable artworks. His accomplished oil painting technique suggests echoes of a bygone era in its detailed rendering of nature's own challenging compositions and potent atmosphere. Is Alexander Heaton's work complex and sometimes puzzling? Yes, indeed. But his canvases are often deeply rewarding, visually stunning, and clearly executed with a sure hand.

Education

Central Saint Martins School of Fine Art BA (Hons) Fine Art.

Cleveland College of Art and Design BTEC Diploma Foundation Studies.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2011 The Secret of the Runes - Pulse Art Fair, Miami.

2011 Trebuchet - The Residence Gallery, London.

2010 Abyssal Wolpertinger - Medcalf Gallery, London.

2009 Harz – Clarke Gallery, Berlin.

Selected Group Exhibitions

2011 Wunderkammer, Clarke Gallery, Bermingham/Berlin/New York/St Johns 

2010 The Future Can Wait, Ellis Rumley Projects, London.

2010 Happiness Machines, Rise Gallery, Berlin.

2009 Splashback, Clark Gallery, Berlin.

2009 Perfect Present, Stable Productions, 242 Gallery, London.

2009 The London Art Fair, Contemporary Art Projects, Islington.

2008 Salon 08 Matt Roberts Fine Art, Vine Space, Vyner Street, London.

2008 The Damned and the Saved, Stand point Gallery, London.

Alexander is represented by-

The Residence Gallery, London.
Clarke Gallery, Berlin/Birmingham.

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