Alex Cameron

Alex Cameron (born 1947) is a visual artist in Toronto, Ontario. He studied at the New School of Art under Coughtry, Gordon Rayner, Burton and Robert Markle. Cameron worked as a studio assistant to Canadian artist Jack Bush from 1972 to 1976 and maintained an ongoing close relationship with Clement Greenberg. Bush is said to have influenced Cameron's "lyrical semi-abstract painting style".

Inspired by the works of Group of Seven and Painters Eleven, Cameron's paintings primarily feature brightly colored, abstracted landscapes. "The suggestion of trees or horizon is often roughly preserved but the real business of the paintings is the rhythm of line, mass, depth and color" says art critic Jeff Mahoney of The Spectator . The artist's early works in the 1970s were "flat, unmodulated fields of color transversed by sketchy cartoon-like drawing". In the early 1980s Cameron's style developed into the "long horizontal and vertical lines of color punctuated by curves, squiggles and free hand geometry" that can be seen in his landscapes today. What separates Cameron from other abstract artists is his concern with "creating the illusion of depth and dimension on a two-dimensional surface". He achieves this by creating a composition composed of a foreground, middle distance and distance. The distance usually contains a sunlit cloud-filled sky, the middle distance shows the watery surface of lakes or streams with a mountainous shore beyond. The foreground typically displays rocks, earth and vegetation. Speaking of his own compositions, Alex Cameron describes his skies as "color fields", explaining that he "has a sky just so [he] can stick stuff in it".

With increased impasto, Cameron paints by "squeezing paint out of tubes in finger-width squiggles, dashes and dots".The artist churns out, on average, one painting a week, but is able to create pieces from start to finish very quickly. He has been known to finish a 6 x 6 ft. work in one day. All of Cameron's titles are invented after the work is completed. Cameron met Queen Elizabeth II of England during the 25th Jubilee celebrations and one of his paintings was presented to the queen as a gift.

Alex Cameron's work is represented by Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto and Vancouver, Oeno Gallery in Bloomfield in Prince Edward County, Giordano Gallery in Edmonton, and Thielsen Galleries in London (Canada).

Selected Solo Exhibitions

Collections