Alex Powers | Piece of Mind

October 7, 2025 – February 15, 2026

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Alex Powers (1941-2020) was born in Coeburn, VA. He received his undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Emory & Henry University (Emory, VA) in 1963. In 1970, Powers moved to Myrtle Beach, SC, and supported himself by charging beach tourists $4 to draw their caricatures. When faced with the realization that he could keep creating work that sold to a popular audience or dive deeper into making work that expressed his experiences, observations and opinions, he opted to create art with a point of view. With time and study, his personal aesthetic evolved, and he gained a following for his work.

Over the course of his 50-year career, Powers exhibited his work internationally, winning numerous awards, including the prestigious American Watercolor Society Gold Medal (1997). In 2010, the Myrtle Beach Art Museum honored him with a solo exhibition titled alex powers: inquiries, which celebrated two decades of his work. His work is housed in numerous collections, including the Myrtle Beach Art Museum, which proudly boasts the largest collection of his work spanning the breadth of his career, including his artistic beginnings in the 1970s. Powers taught classes and workshops all over the country, and his book, Painting People in Watercolor: A Design Approach (1989), was in publication for 17 years. 

He was a prolific artist who worked mostly in gouache, pastel, charcoal and watercolor. His work evolved from traditional landscapes, portraits and figure drawings to expressive mixed media works that tend to look more like deconstructed paintings or large sketchbook studies, often containing hand-drawn text expressing his point of view on all kinds of subjects ranging from religion and politics to sports, music and human relationships. It is the artist’s later work – that which confronts the viewer with his opinions and perceptions – that makes up the exhibition, Piece of Mind.