For Alex, painting is a wonderful way of engaging with the beauty and peculiarity of the visible world; whether working on a Landscape, Cityscape, Figure or Still Life there is similar joy in unpicking the perceptual experience. What makes it just so is never to do with an inventory list of things seen, but an experience distilled through eye, mind and feeling. The realisation is that there is nothing more abstract than the visible world, and the hope is to capture something of the visceral experience of place, whether working on a large still life painting in the relative calm of the studio or out in the streets of a foreign city. Alex Fowler works predominantly in oils, although he does draw regularly in charcoal or pencil and enjoys experimenting in other mediums, gouache, watercolour, pastel and chalks, remembering the advice of teachers not to get stuck in old habits. In the most part his work is from life but he is not afraid to work from memory, sketches, photographs or a combination of all three. Photographs can be very useful for maintaining some topographical accuracy when working on a landscape away from the subject, but the mood must always be driven by the memory of the experience of being there. He likes to work directly in paint, without too much planning, allowing room for surprises to happen, for the paint to talk back, adjusting the relationships until rightness clicks into place.