Feel each stroke, both diligent and chaotic, in Alex Gibson’s unique body of work

2019 Yale School of Arts graduate Alex Gibson works through a unique stroke that dances between abstract expressionism, and cartoon rendering. The talented artist draws inspiration from a myriad of animation styles across history, and approaches the canvas with a fearlessness evident in his expressive stroke. Comfortable in a wide array of color palettes, each work of art carries a unique presence of the artist himself. We had the chance to interview Alex Gibson and were able to learn more about his upbringing and drive.

Untitled, 2021, 48×34 inches, pastel, rabbit skin glue, acrylic, marble on panel, Courtesy of the Artist

Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from and when did art first enter your life?

I’ve always looked at art. My parents are painters, so I grew up around art and art books, going to museums, spending time in their studios. I remember being horrified by a copy of Saturn of Devouring His Son on the back of a Goya book as a child, that’s probably when art first entered my life. That was in Massachusetts, I moved to New York to go to Cooper Union in 2009 and I’ve lived here since. 

Untitled, 2020, 40×23″, pastel, rabbit skin glue, marble on panel, Courtesy of the Artist

How would you describe the style of your work? Has it always taken on the style it currently embodies?

The way I draw has been fairly consistent for a long time, I feel like I comfortably own my hand now. I think about the way Sigmar Polke completely excised himself from his “touch,” what makes his hand so recognizable is how unrecognizable it is. The rigor is in his refusal of the seductive, the refusal to make a line pleasing or emotive in a way that might have been easier. I feel a lot more responsible for my hand than I used to; it’s mine and my drawings are my own and they came out like this on purpose. Still, I don’t have Polke’s severity or commitment, so that’s something to work on.

Untitled, 2021, 48×34″, pastel, rabbit skin glue, marble on panel, Courtesy of the Artist

What is your process like when you begin a work? 

When I begin an individual work, sometimes I start from nothing, usually I have something to look at. Maybe I see a comic page where everything is black and white lines, except for a figure in the corner who’s been shaded through, and I think, “that’s a nice idea I’m going to rip that off.” I try to take lots of photos, I have a cute little film point and shoot, so maybe I’m looking at some of those prints. I’m definitely a printout person, I like having them on the floor all dirty instead of on my phone or computer or something. 

Untitled, 2020, 40×23″, pastel, rabbit skin glue, marble on panel, Courtesy of the Artist

Walk us through a day in the studio. 

I get in, I drink my coffee and smoke my cigarettes. It takes me a long time to work, I have to look for a long time before I’m ready to do any mark making, so I spend as much time as I can in the studio just hanging around the work doing other things. I don’t have any windows, so it’s easy to lose track of time. I look at my pictures, I scroll through Bridge, I check and recheck Twitter. I print out my screenshots from the last few days and maybe I find something worth drawing.

Untitled, 2021, 48×34″, pastel, rabbit skin glue, acrylic, marble on panel, Courtesy of the Artist

From where do you draw inspiration?  

Other than that, I look at New Yorker cartoons, especially from the first 50 or so years the magazine was around. The economy of comics is so good; how much can you show about a person with a line next to their mouth? How does the caption affect the image? I cut off a bunch of captions once and moved them around, it’s amazing, you literally see the image change before your eyes as its context changes. The earlier cartoonists were masters of that kind of manipulation, people like William Hamilton and Helen Hokinson could create whole narratives outside the image just by tinkering with a facial expression and a turn of phrase. I am trying to bring that kind of extrapolation into my work.

I try to start a lot of things at once, a bunch of surfaces. I work the whole surface at once, building out towards the viewer (as opposed to starting in a corner I guess) and I try to use that same logic on the studio as a whole. Everything should be at about the same level of completion, I finish the batch, I start anew. I build my surfaces, so the cycle of building/priming/working makes sense like this for me. 

2020, 40×23″, pastel, rabbit skin glue, marble on panel

Your work varies in style and medium. Can you walk us through the materials you’ve worked with?

In the past I was using oil paints and brushes, but I think I was always drawing with paint. Now that I’m mostly on pastels, the immediacy that oils always got in the way of feels much more available. Style-wise, I like the bold and the graphic, I like outlines, but I try to be wary of what I like. If I do something crisp and pretty I have to do something shitty and ugly to balance it out. I’m attracted to finished looking, seductive images from cartoons, movies, design, but that’s not what I want to produce. So, to answer your question, maybe the style of my work is bad cartoons, or half finished paintings. The Unfinished show at the Met Breur was really productive for me; I’d never liked a Klimt until I saw the one he walked away halfway through. I don’t know why he didn’t just do that with all of them.

Untitled, 2021, 48×34″, pastel, rabbit skin glue, marble on panel, Courtesy of the Artist

Have you seen your work change at all during this time of COVID?

Quarantine has been a real manga renaissance for me, I haven’t read this many comics since middle school. They’re mostly pretty juvenile, but I like the drawings and I think the last six months have involved a lot of escapism for a lot of people so I don’t feel too guilty. Nobunaga no Chef by Mitsuru Nishimura and Takuro Kajikawa is the best one I’ve read recently.

Untitled, 2020, 40×23″, pastel, rabbit skin glue, marble on panel, Courtesy of the Artist

If you could have a coffee chat with one historical figure, who would it be and why?   

Petronius! But maybe a bottle of wine would be more appropriate? I made a lot of drawings while I was reading Satyricon. It’s sadistic and strange and psychedelic, but what was the biggest trip for me was how familiar it all is. The idea that people, humans, are drastically different than they were 2000 years ago is debunked, they just drink and gossip and lie to one another and themselves much the same way we do now. He seems like a jolly fellow, anyway most of his work is lost to history.

Untitled, 2020, 40×23″, pastel, rabbit skin glue, marble on panel, Courtesy of the Artist

At the end of every interview, we like to ask the artist to recommend a friend whose work you love for us to interview next. Who would you suggest?

Aaron Graham and Lauren Quin!

Untitled, 2020, 40×23″, pastel, rabbit skin glue, marble on panel, Courtesy of the Artist