Alex Gardner's new paintings explore how becoming a father twice over has fundamentally shifted his artistic vision. Where his earlier work was haunted by existential anxiety, these thirteen canvases—rendered in bruised blues and dense greens across varying scales, radiates a harder-won optimism. The faceless figures float in placeless scenes of embrace and interconnection, sometimes sinking, sometimes baptized by suggested water. Gardner has begun depicting children and babies for the first time, using them as symbols of hope rather than addressing fatherhood directly.
