The Artist
A childhood set to a backdrop of vast red deserts and wild outback...
Alex Platt was born and raised in rural New South Wales. However being the daughter of gold prospecting parents, lengthy family trips were spent camping in the isolated desert regions of western Australia.
Her time there was often occupied by drawing and painting, and exploring her surrounds. A desire to express herself and communicate visually was something ingrained in her character from these very early days. This connection with the outdoors, and elements of the natural world are still very present in her work today.
A different view…
As an adult Platt pursued a career as an artist, choosing to remain self-taught.
For the past 15 years, she has been exhibiting her work throughout Australia in both commercial and government funded galleries. Her work also having made it’s way into numerous private collections abroad.
Now living France, her works are evolving as a result, balancing the two very different worlds of her past and present; That of her raw and familiar homeland, and that of the historically and culturally rich nation of France.
Her work is often autobiographical, sometimes whimsical and always thought provoking.
Working on stretched canvas, Platt’s paintings achieve a unique marriage between fine line detail and expressive textural backgrounds, where many layers of diluted acrylic paint create their own movement. Details are subtly highlighted with fine black outlines, each calling forward the beauty of eyes, mouths, bottles and light bulbs, water drops and native birds.
“I create gentle surrealistic works in an illustrative style, working with acrylic paint on canvas, using various techniques I have stumbled upon over the years.
Inspiration for my works come from the world and people around me, I create visual poetic representations of the ideas and feelings that I experience. The repeating symbols I use are also something that has developed naturally throughout the years, and although they may not be universal, I encourage the fact that they will be interpreted in many varying ways by each different person.
My desire to paint, stems from a fascination with an undefinable sort of beauty. And through the movement, texture, and colour of paint, I am sometimes able to find that, telling a story that is neither linear nor literal.”
— Alex Platt