ALEX RUSSELL FLINT
Reflective Moments
Ted Seth Jacobs (1927-2019) wrote, “Most of what is called Realist Art today is a reworking of the past, especially of the Nineteenth Century, which promoted extreme simplification. Art cannot advance by going backward. I named my style Restructured Realism because I would like to think that it reconnects with the visual tradition of the past and brings it into the present, evolves it into a contemporary interpretation of our visual experience.”
Alex Russell Flint happened upon a postcard with one of Jacobs’ paintings and immediately enrolled in Jacobs’ art school program at L’École Albert Defois in France. Flint comments, “Ted's rigorous training opened my eyes to observing what was around and in front of me, and what a colorful world it is.”
He paints in his studio in London and in an old schoolhouse in France. “My house in France is in a small, quiet rural village,” he explains. “It was the village school built in 1850. It’s a wonderful place to live and work. Most of my paintings are set within its walls or the immediate surroundings. Ancient buildings and crumbling old chateau ruins—burned down in the French Revolution—make the mind wonder about previous lives here and despite the fact it’s now an idyllic and peaceful environment to live in, it was at other times violent and turbulent. Bad things can happen in nice places. I try to capture a sense of this in many of my paintings. Often inspiration comes from an old object I find in the many flea markets I visit, that I then base a narrative around—such as roller skates,
an old phone, a shovel. I try to leave the story vague and open to the viewers own interpretation.”
He continues, “I try to create beauty with a playful, dark element to my pictures because I like the tension it creates. Films and photography are a regular source of inspiration—Terrence Malick, Tim Walker, Wong Kar-wai, Anja Niemi, to name but a few.”
He has been drawing his entire life and he grew up surrounded by the paintings of his great-grandfather, Sir William Russell Flint (1880-1969). “I think I absorbed his sensibilities—his love of France—he painted a lot in the Loire Valley, which is where I spent many years studying with the painter Ted Seth Jacobs—rustic countryside, the female form.”
Flint’s U.S. debut exhibition will be held at Arcadia Contemporary in Pasadena, California, October 26 through November 16.
A curved stair rail stays within the picture frame in Descending as an elegantly dressed woman descends out of the frame to join a soiree that could be transformative or dreadful. The third in Three may be the wrapped “object” to the left or the baby growing in the belly of the rifle-wielding young girl on the right. Her companion sports a shovel—a dark twist on the idea of a shotgun wedding.
Flint’s figures are not passive. They are contemporary women caught in moments of reflection, contemplating what they are going to do next.