Viewing Alexander Nolan at Crean & Co

The New York-based artist Alexander Nolan is developing a name for himself as an exciting new painting talent. Often inspired by scenes of city life, his works spanning oils, acrylics, pastels, watercolours and inks on paper conjure a colourful world of fantastical realism, fusing the satirical, the surreal and the salacious. (Think wine-swigging monks, candlelit dinners with skeletons and violin concertos attended by cats and dogs.)

His first solo viewing room of works at online gallery Crean & Company includes 31 new works that draw on a range of styles and movements, from the genre scenes of Old Masters to the darkly comic storytelling of Tom & Jerry. ‘I enjoy walking through my mind as if it were a forest,’ Nolan says. ‘There is something mesmerising about the appearance of things — drawing the world around me stimulates the world within me’.

Online highlights include Stocking Up On Toilet Paper (2020), which references the pandemonium of 2020; and On Nancy’s Couch, which evokes the tedium of self-isolation. Needless to say, this one should provide ample lunch-time distraction.