Alexander Purves : Watercolors and Drawings
November 2-27, 2021
Reception Nov 4, 5-8 pm
Artist present on Saturdays
A show of watercolors and drawings by Alexander Purves will be held at the Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City from November 2 through November 27, 2021. All were made during the last two winters in northwestern Connecticut where Purves maintains a studio. The restrictions of the last two years have encouraged us to look closely at the natural world that immediately surrounds us, discovering beauty in tangled vines and random branches. This untidy landscape has been the consistent focus of Purves’s work for many years. The subjects of the current pictures are the trees surrounding his studio as well as impressions of the snowy Connecticut landscape.
Solo exhibitions of Purves’s watercolors have been held at the Blue Mountain Gallery (2006, 2010, 2013, 2016) and the Bar des Artistes at the Union League Café in New Haven (2010). The Washington (CT) Art Association has also shown his work (1987, 1992, 2003). In 2013 the Whitney Humanities Center mounted a show of his Roman sketches, and in 2002 his travel drawings were exhibited at the Hunter College Leubsdorf Gallery in a show entitled “On Site.” A retrospective of his watercolors was held at Yale’s Koerner Center in 2017.
Alexander Purves received his design training at the Yale University School of Architecture, graduating in 1965 with a Master of Architecture degree. His professional career has been primarily that of an architect and a teacher of design. He has drawn and painted all his life and is now focusing on his career as an artist.
Purves has lectured widely and participated as a visiting critic at schools including Harvard Graduate School of Design, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, Carleton University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Ohio State University. He has also led many Yale Educational Travel programs, study tours that have included Italy, France and the British Isles as well as Eastern Europe, the Turkish coast, Egypt and Japan.
Artist Statement