I graduated in 1997 from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art with a BDes (Hons) in Illustration and Printmaking. Since then, I have been employed by Perth College as a lecturer in art and design, and I recently completed an MA in Fine Art.
As an artist, I feel that nostalgia has had, and continues to have a huge impact on my practice. It connects happy memories with the sad reality that they can never be truly relived, and gives me a restless creative yearning to visualise and document times past. Although it often evokes a wistful emptiness, ironically elements of the past can also lift my mood and aid my relaxation, which in turn allow me to create art about the things in life that I feel a connection with.
The music from the 80s has a strong influence on me and my art and is a constant companion to me when working in my studio. The dialogue between music and emotion intrigues me, and has inspired many of my paintings and artworks. I admire the vaporwave aesthetic of 80s airbrush art and movies and I also have a love of tropicalia which is evident in some of my abstract works.
The other nostalgic element to my practice relates to my childhood growing up in rural Perthshire. Memories of playing in the woodland, collecting fragments of nature and marvelling at the weird and wonderful species around me has given me a fascination for exploring my own version of the Romantic notion of the Sublime – aspects of nature which are often terrifying yet contain a mesmerizing beauty.
Sometimes I challenge myself to try to combine the two themes – nature and 80s culture, to see what emerges…
Contact details:
Indigo Gallery Highside Main Street Bankfoot Perthshire PH14AB
email : alex.kershaw@perth.uhi.ac.uk
website : www.alexkershaw.co.uk https://www.facebook.com/galleryindigo
Antidotal Recall 
Natures patterns! I agree!