Alan Ewart

Alan Ewart was born in New Zealand in 1947. Afflicted with severe asthma as a child, he spent extended periods in hospital heading into his teens, circumstances that saw his imagination develop as the only facility he had for survival. This imagination emerged and developed into his expression, his art.

 

Ewart began to draw and paint and has never stopped. He studied at the Wellington School of Graphic Arts for three years, focusing on illustration and technical drawing. Following art school, Ewart worked in advertising in New Zealand before relocating to Sydney, Australia in 1970.

 

After a career in advertising and as the resident artist for the Department of Agriculture, Ewart began a freelance career where his primary tool quickly became the airbrush. His clients ranged from Miranda Wines to Playboy, amongst various other magazines, publications, movies, and even an album cover for Sherbet.

 

For the last two decades Ewart has focused on what he loves and drawn inspiration from travel and that which is around him, often combining reality with abstractions to form surreal realism, a dominant recent theme. While much of his career has been spent creating pieces by commission, he has recently focused more on following his own imaginative impulses. In 2013 his painting Temptation was listed as a finalist in the Surrealism section of the Mortimore Art Prize.