Biography

Alexander Heaton's work reaches deep into the imagination, searching for mans most primeval interaction with nature. His paintings attempt to capture that first interaction, and the sense of wonder and spirituality as humanity confronts omnipresence. Alex works from experience, researching and conducting studies in remote natural settings. Through long and meaningful communion with nature his many drawings and paintings assert the inherent worth of deep spiritual reflection and recognise union with land and the elements. He also uses cut up techniques to sample found photography from retro mountaineering literature to journey to some of the more extream places on the canvas that he has not personally been able to visit. Alex often draws upon mystical experiences and noetic connections to illustrate in paint the words of the divine presence felt in the places he chooses to depict. He draws upon such wells of references as shamanism, mythology, gnosticism, extreme sports, and ecstatic mountain lore.

Landscape Artist

As a mountaineer Alex, studies and researches themes directly. He often thinks nothing of walking and climbing to remote places in the Himalaya or Alps just to cast an eye on his artistic muse – "I am the lonely figure lured by mountains, dark forests, alpine skies and forbidding ravines." The paintings look out from dreamy summits and contemplate the beyond. Through his canvases he continues on the Romantic journey, but updates this visual language with the possibility of going to higher, more challenging and steeper places. "My work teeters on the edge of a filmic realism and also at times uses sampled vignettes of other climbers photographs." There are hints of something more transcendant in the dark forests and crumbling glaciers that populate his works to date. It’s this struggle that fascinates him to keep painting. Recent works transports the viewer to hallucinatory and altered worlds. These are not real places, but are constructs of sublime vistas I have experienced or sampled. The work touches on a common longing in us all to escape the modern urban landscape and throw oneself whole heartedly into serene expanses, and witness at first hand awe-inspiring natural phenomena. This isn’t always possible on a day-to-day basis, but painting as substitute for exploration can be. However, the work at times offers us dangerous realities of complete desolation or abandonment at the ends of the world. This comes from his own experiences as a mountaineer. Witnessing in nature not love or beauty but an unsentimental commitment to constant change and renewal. In this way the work laments on our own mortality and strives to find salvation in our experience of the here and now. He is seeking through the act of painting to engage with nature through intense looking to see something of the spiritual. Nature at her most harsh and unsentimental as an overriding force is the main focus of interest. "I wish to achieve through my art work a feeling of longing in the viewer for something half known or experienced from the past when our connection with nature was much closer and crucial to our existence. I want to bring to life through images the places we never quite got to over the horizon, just beyond our reach and invest them with something of the divine." 

Gallery Representation: Rheged Gallery, Artiq, Denali Schmidt Art Gallery.

Education:

Central Saint Martins School of Fine Art BA (Hons) Fine Art.
Cleveland College of Art and Design BTEC Diploma Foundation Studies.

Events:

Alex exhibits widely, both nationally and internationally. Most notable recognition to date has included his participation in Everest Revisited at Rheged in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club. In 2023 he exhibited a solo show in Namche Bazar, Nepal utilising waste as a medium collected from the Everest footpaths. 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 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), Aqua Art Fair, Miami (2008). Alexander’s first solo show was The Horn that Matters (2007) at The Empire gallery. 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.

Residencies:

2023 Sagarmatha Next -Nepal.

2020 The Florence Trust - London.

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

2023 Sagarmatha Next - Waste to Art, Namchee Bazar, Nepal.

2015 Project Thin Air - The Residence Gallery, London. 
2013 Do the Ravens Still Circle the Mountaintop? – VJB Arts 10 Gresham Street, London. 
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. 
2007 The Horn That Matters – The Empire Gallery, London. 
2006 Alpine Retreat of the A14 –Union Arts Club London. 
2004 The Uncontrollable Urge to fly – Primitif Gallery, London

Selected Group Exhibitions

2024 Everest Revisited - Rheged, Penrith.

2022 The Cure is worse than the (alleged) disease, Secret Art Gallery, London

2018 Voids Rage Chimera Bloom - A Side B Side Gallery, London.

2017 Modern Panic 8 - Apairy Studios, London
2017 As it Stands: Unrefined, muted, abandoned - Hundred Years Gallery, London.
2017 Summer Salon - Islington Arts Factory, London.
2013 60% Water – James Freeman Gallery, London.
2013 Busan Art Fair – Busan, South Korea.
2012 Space Rage – The Residence Gallery, London.
2012 London Art Fair – Residence Gallery, London.
2011 Wunderkammer - Clarke Gallery, Birmingham/Berlin/New York/Sydney/St Johns.
2010 The Future Can Wait - Ellis Rumley Projects, London.
2010 Happiness Machines - Rise Gallery, Berlin.
2009 Splash back - Clarke Gallery, Berlin.
2009 Perfect Present - Stable Productions, 242 Gallery, London.
2009 The London Art Fair - Contemporary Art Projects, Islington, London.
2008 Aqua Art Fair – Aqua Hotel, Miami.
2008 Salon 08 - Matt Roberts Fine Art, Vine Space, Vyner Street, London.
2008 The Damned and the Saved - Stand point Gallery, London.
2007 07 Projects Art Fair – County Hall, London.