Alex Powers
36 Alex Powers, My Favorite Subject Is People #10, carbon pencil and pastel, 11″x60″ |
| *taken from Alex Powers: inquiries
born 1940 death 2020 Appalachian mountains of Virginia
worked in father’s coal mines one mine was just above knee-high miners worked bent over all day which prompted me to consider what my life’s work might be
elementary school art class an oil painting of the tv dog lassie taking the painting home on the school bus students on the bus said how good it was i was embarrassed the teacher had painted most of it art and authenticity
loved high school played sports very little studying lots of fun reverse of goethe’s faust carefree early life and then yearned for a more intellectually stimulating adult life
not ready for college it was the opposite of high school for me
bachelor’s degree in mathematics i chose math because there was less reading math teacher in non-graded high school near cape kennedy 9th grade son of a cape kennedy rocket scientist submitted papers of mathematical proof of a 4th dimension of space, etc. i didn’t understand any of it returning his paper was very embarrassing i’m glad there was no youtube.com at the time
my mathematics degree led to computer programming at cape kennedy there were no computer classes in 1966 on-job-training only i once spent 3 days looking for an out-of-place comma drove me to more humane field of study – art
country boy introduced to cultural world
jilted first love she did introduce me to the arts
writing poetry and local classes in ceramics, drawing, painting painting and drawing art schools in florida, new york, massachusetts, connecticut
(10-foot-wide painting titled ‘an autobiography’ is in the exhibition)
took art teaching job at an all-black greensboro, nc junior high school i would ask a student or teacher to pose after school for a portrait propped the portrait on a table in the teachers’ lounge the next day school principal thought i possessed some kind of magic since i could capture a likeness myrtle beach, sc 1969 $4 charcoal portraits on the sidewalk 4 summers noon to midnight 7 days a week
local art teaching in my studio
biggest joys 1 self-employment 2 educating myself 3 making paintings of what i learned
philosophy what does life offer we are all philosophers in the way we live our lives
I don’t want to be a cultural rube
baseball fan as entertainment i dropped it when i first became interested in art thinking it was silly later realized that i really enjoyed it – silly or not
artist andrew wyeth
new york city art trips
i luckily had excellent art mentors they don’t want their names mentioned because they generously claim they are colleagues rather than mentors expanded my aesthetic with the help of my mentors
i still remember standing in the middle of my studio ‘i will take the prettiness out of my paintings and see if there is any art left’
traveling and teaching workshops teaching just as difficult to learn as painting national juried exhibitions best-of-show awards including american watercolor society, new york, ny, 1997 san diego watercolor society international juried exhibition, 2002 articles in art magazines wrote an art book, painting people in watercolor: a design approach, which was in print for 17 years
an artist friend mused: ‘most artists are angry early and mellow later in life alex is just the opposite’ i didn’t know enough of the world when i was young to see its fallacies |
