@alexiswinter

Instagram: @alexiswinter Etsy: www.alexiswinter.etsy.com Website: www.alexiswinter.com  

1. What’s your story? Where are you from?

I’m an Illustrator and Visual Arts Teacher from Melbourne Australia. Half of my immediate family live in Australia, while the other half live in Sweden, so I was raised with a smattering of both cultures.

2. Tell us about your aesthetic.

Stylised and linear with a strong sense of visual humour. I love a visual joke like you would not believe. As to wether or not anyone understands the joke is another story, but also irrelevant. Visual metaphors are amongst my favourite story telling devices as well.

3. What is your favourite medium and why?

0.5mm black uniball fine liners. They are honestly used in almost everything I make. Wether it be a simple line drawing or the linework I put down for scanning before digital colouring. I use them in everything and they are so fluid and create such beautiful lines, I love them.

4. What is your artistic process like?

I always start with a concept. For me, the concept is the most important part of anything I make, as it forms the very basis for how I communicate it visually. Once the concept has been created the rest flows pretty organically. The line-work is usually done with my favourite uniball fine liner, and then I will either colour with paints, or digitally. Sometimes a combination of the two. I try to utilise what I have in the environment which I am illustrating.

5. Who and/or what inspires your work?

Everything! The colours on a frog, something funny you overhear on the train, a piece of hair stuck on the wall, all of these things can become the catalyst to a great idea. Creating art for me often feels like solving puzzles. Does this mean I secretly long to be a detective? Who knows, but I feel like the world is constantly dropping little clues and inspiration all over the place.

6. What role does art play in your life? How does it change the way you view the world?

“Art IS life!” I retorted last week in response to someone’s claim that students who study more than one art subject have no lives (nonsense). Art makes the world fun! Art also helps us endure and press forward during times of rapid personal growth, trouble, and difficulty.

7. Where did you study?

I studied Communication Design at RMIT University and then Education at ACU University, both in Melbourne.

8. Where do you see yourself in five years? Working for an agency?

In 5 years I’ll be 33, so hopefully settled into a teaching job that I find fulfilling, possible the owner of a super sweet dog, and still creating art that I love.

9. What about in ten?

10 years! Oh my. Well, life always takes us in crazy directions that we could never predict so I don’t want to speculate too much, however hopefully enjoying all of the luxuries from “Where do you see yourself in 5 years” only with the addition of a funny husband and maybe some equally funny children.

10. What do you hope to achieve with your art?

I want to remind people not to take themselves too seriously, and be ever on the watch for linings made of silver.

11. Now, tell us a little more about you as a person: what is your favourite food?

Potatoes. They’re hands down the most versatile food in existence. You can fry them, boil them, roast them, mash them, season them! They are the real deal. I went grocery shopping the other day and they were OUT of potatoes. I thought I had fallen through a rip in time, I didn’t know that reality was even possible here on earth.

12. Favourite book?

I can’t possibly pick! My books might read this and then start to question their place on my bookshelf.

13. Favourite genre of music?

Tough call, I think instead I’ll answer this by stating my two biggest musical influencers. Firstly, Tom Waits, because he writes the most depressingly poetic fables in the most beautiful way and is a masterful story teller. Secondly, Tchaikovsky because he says with music what words fail to express.

14. What are your hobbies?

I have a fit bit that I don’t wear anymore.

15. If you weren't an artist, what would you be?

An orchestra conductor! I played the viola for 10 years and became a classical music addict. Could you imagine? So many harmonies, all the time!