Artist Profile
An artist and photographer, Alex Boyd is perhaps best known for his series ‘Sonnets’ – a collaboration with national poet Edwin Morgan.
Born in Germany in 1984, he grew up on the West Coast of Scotland. Educated at the University of Glasgow, he has worked alongside photographers such as Rankin, and trained under Japanese master printer Takeshi Shikama. Alex is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art (FRSA) and his work is held in several national collections such as the National Gallery of Scotland, The Royal Photographic Society, and The Yale Museum of British Art, as well as private collections across the world. Alex has exhibited widely with solo exhibitions at the Scottish Parliament and the Royal Academy as well as internationally at venues such as the Royal Ulster Academy and the European Parliament.
“My work is inspired by a sense of ‘Fernweh’ – a longing for travelling to far off and often remote places. I find that Scotland provides more inspiration than I could ever hope for, and I’ve found my true home working in the mountains, highlands and islands of this beautiful country.
In my work I’m constantly looking to depict a sense of place, an idea I explored in my photographic series Sonnets and now through working directly in the wilderness with a plate camera, chemicals and a sense of determination.”
Alex Boyd
What We Love About Alex's Work
The images in Alex’s work are intense and captivating. You cannot move away from them easily, they instantly transport you so that you feel you are standing just behind the figure in these images waiting for something, remembering a moment or just quietly looking out on life. These landscapes exist in the most beautiful, wild corners of Scotland and his images make me think of how I have often felt standing in the some of these special places in the moody, mysterious atmosphere that is unique to this country.
Alex’s work seems to form a visual thread connecting the contemporary with the ancient. His skills in photography are extensive and authentic delving into time consuming, labor intensive Victorian processes such as wet-plate ‘collodion’ and ‘photo-gravure’ for his landscape work. The results are mesmerising.
Lorraine
