George Alexander

Inspired by his boyhood experience of the lush vegetation of the Southern United States and his extensive European travels, unabashed Romantic, George Alexander has applied his skilled hands to the consecration of wondrous clay earth and her luminous pageant by creating fantastic ceramic flora and fauna. His influences are as varied as Flemish tapestries and French and Spanish Majolica, especially the Italian Capadimonte. His flowers are vehicles of discovery and expansion upon the nature of clay’s possibilities; they are three-dimensional canvasses through which he can explore form, color and texture. He belongs to an extremely small group of artists worldwide who have the technical skill and vision to produce such rich complex color and form.

The cult of nature roots in the soil of prehistory, and flowers in fabulous expression throughout epochs and today as during the first recorded days. George Alexander’s work is a post-modern pastiche of riotous garden and early civilization that bespeaks an intense human-natural harmonic as well as a tendency towards time travel. The blue glaze and architectonic forms he uses in Poppies and Doves, recall the Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon. Audrey’s Cousins, the utterly fantastic red poppy fount sprays like Pompeii in her heyday, brings to mind India at the time of the Vedas. These giant water poppies are sirens luring sustenance. Bejeweled by golden drops of dew, the spirits of the blue corn hold husks and circle dance along the rim of bowl, like caryatids in a nourishing architecture that from the time of the ancestors has sustained. Dancing Corn is an upside down Tempietto, and a joyous dance of abandons celebrating a promised future. Infused into all this is a deliberate wit and tongue in cheek sense of humor.

George Alexander’s ceramics have the delicacy and absorbed attention to fine detail that is admired in the artistry of antiquity and today. He shares also their sincere celebration of the abundance of life. His flowers spill out beyond the bounds of their architectural frames and vessels, or sit simply expanding in scale as if the gallery wall had decided to pop open and bloom.

Inspired by the splendid profusion of nature, yet eschewing botanical accuracy, the images of George Alexander’s remarkable art are fantastical. They are removed from the everyday real world, allowing curious examination and exploration as he references nature’s cycle. They are a full "flowering" before the onset of deterioration and decay necessary to produce the nutrients for future growth and fulfillment. His individual pieces explore this in different ways, but their timeless beauty and delicate strength spring from one source. What they all have in common is George Alexander’s fearless grasp of life affirming exuberance.

selected works (click icon for full view)