ALASTAIR GORDON

b.1979, Scotland, UK

“I don’t seek a view but a sense of place. From here the paintings are developed in the studio to appear as drawing boards and sketchbook work. Oscillating between hyperrealism and intuitive gesture, they both tame and subsume to the wilderness itself.” - as Gordon states.

Alastair Gordon is best known for highly illusionistic paintings (rooted in the quodlibet tradition) but he combines his heightened sense of realism with historical notions of intuitive wildness and British wilderness painting. Gordon makes paintings about paintings; works that oscillate between artifact and artifice. We are presented with landscapes as still lives and sketches as completed works. Certain questions emerge about authenticity, the painting process and how we consider notions of landscape today. The veracity of the object is constantly in doubt yet the wild is ever calling.

In making his works Gordon travelled to the outer reaches of the British Isles, undertaking a painting pilgrimage from the heights of the Lake District, depths of Caithness peat flows and furthest reaches of the Outer Hebrides. Sitting atop mountain peaks and sinking into peat bogs each work begins in the landscape.

Alastair Gordon is a London based artist and tutor and a course leader for the Graduate Residency Scheme at Leith School of Art, Edinburgh. Last year, Alastair was artist in residency for City and Guilds of London Art School followed by a parallel residency with PADA Studios in Lisbon.

Notable Alastair’s solo exhibitions: Quodlibet, Aleph Contemporary, UK (2021), Without Borders, Aleph Contemporary, UK, (2020), and at City and Guilds of London Art School, UK (2020) and Souvenirs from the Waste Land, Ahmanson Gallery, Los Angeles (2017), at First Things Gallery, New York (2017).

Notable group exhibitions include: LA Art Show, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Los Angeles (2024), Miami Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Miami (2023), British Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London (2023), Chicago Expo, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Chicago (2023), Here After, Bridge Projects, Los Angeles, (2022), Unpacking Gainsborough, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London (2021), The Long Echo, Terrace Gallery, London (2021), The Just, Alpeh Contemporary London, (2020), The Collectors Room, JGM Gallery, London (2020), London Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London (2020), Summer / Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy, London (2020).

He was the inaugural winner of the Shoesmiths painting prize and co-recipient of the Dentons Art Prize. Gordon has been shortlisted for the Denton Art Prize, 2020.

Gordon’s work is found in numerous prominent private and public collections including Beth Rudin de Woody, New York; Simmons and Simmons, London; Ahmanson Collection, Los Angeles; Landmark PLC, London; Bow Arts Trust, London; The Royal Bank of Scotland Collection, and The Glasgow School of Art Alumni Collection.

Alastair Gordon is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Alastair Gordon | US