Divining the Human: The Art of Alexander Newley

(Hardback)

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Spanning the worlds of Portraiture, Landscape, The Nude, Abstraction and Still Life, Alexander Newleys project fuses the Fine Art traditions of patient observation and draughtsmanship with the transcendental intuitions of the mystic. For me, art is a moral activity, he says, a straining after the highest virtue of beauty and enlarged consciousness. As such, all art is essentially religious, even when it shows us the ugliness of a fallen world. Complementing the images is Newleys personal reminiscence, placing each work in a fascinating narrative of self-becoming and an often-dogged determination to stay true to his calling. The result is a unique account of an artists journey in his own words, firmly setting before us a body of work that continues to evolve and explore, always affirming a uniquely human future.

Author Bio

Alexander Newley is a leading contemporary artist, writer and teacher known on both sides of the Atlantic for his iconic portrait paintings of major figures in the Arts including Dame Judi Dench, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Christopher Reeve, Oliver Stone and Steven Berkoff. His work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and The Smithsonian in Washington DC.