Alex Ayers – Middle Tennessee Artist, specializing in Pet Portraits and Water Color Portraiture

In 2013, I lost my father to bone cancer at the age of 63.  I was a new mom with a 2-year-old and a 13-month-old.   I was wading through grief combined post-partum hormones.   I was truly a mess.

One day, as I was sorting through the mountain of paperwork that comes with burying a loved one, I came across this booklet from Hospice about grief.  I don’t remember much of what it said, but one thing struck me.  One simple thought.  “As you approach the first anniversary of their passing, dedicate something you do to the loved one you’ve lost.  It may be something they did with you or just something you like to do, but choose to do something for yourself and do it in honor of them.”

I don’t know why this particular coping mechanism stuck out in my mind, but it nagged and nagged at me.  My dad hung the moon for me when I was a kid.  He knew every answer or where to find it.  He could do anything.  Dad was a master carpenter.  He was an inventor.  He was the best creative cook.  He was so many things that I wish I had taken the time to pursue with him when I was too busy being a cool teenager and hanging out with my friends.  I didn’t know what to choose, but I knew finding something to honor him was what my heart needed to begin truly healing.  And something in my heart urged me to choose painting.

Now, I’ve always done art.  My dad would rave over my childhood drawings, just as all parents do.  They were nothing special, but I enjoyed drawing and coloring and art supplies.  I loved impressionism and surrealism and looking at art.  When I was in elementary school, Dad brought me back Salvador Dali Nose and Lips perfume from the Gulf War where he was stationed in Europe building tanks for the National Guard.

This is about the time I started taking art from a local painter.  She just gathered kids in her basement studio several afternoons a week and encouraged them to create.  I did so many terrible paintings during that time, but my Dad loved them all.

In high school, I had an incredibly talented art teacher.  This is when I started learning about shapes and shadows and drawing techniques.  My teacher was incredibly positive about everything, and she exposed me to every different art form and technique she could stuff into 4 semesters.  The things I created during this time, while not good, hold a dear place in my heart.  They were truly expressive of who I was at that time.

College drew me away from art from a creative standpoint.  I dabbled in landscape and interior design but strayed away from the art department for some elusive reason that I now rather regret.  I settled on a practical major in Communication Disorders and graduated with a job in the medical field as a Speech Language Pathologist, of which I’ve been a practitioner for the last 12 years.

The saving grace for art in college was my double major in Spanish.  It allowed me to study abroad and travel extensively.  I took in every art museum, every cathedral, every architectural delight, every heritage festival, every artisan market, all the colors and talents…. collecting unique artisan works from every place I visited.  I drank it all in and savored it all in my heart.  I fell in love with every new thing.

For seven or eight years after that I got wrapped up in establishing a career and a family and a “life.”  In 2011, my son was born.  The day he was born, Dad shared with me his terminal prognosis.  He had been keeping it from me so that I wouldn’t go into labor early.  My father’s impending death re-prioritized everything.  I quit my job, started traveling to care for him 11 hours away with a small infant in tow.  The next year brought the birth of my daughter, and even more traveling and care-giving and colic and no sleeping and near insanity.

As my daughter was learning to take her first steps, my Dad was losing his ability to walk.  I flew to see him on her first birthday, knowing the end was coming, but trying to stuff in as many memories for the kids of him as I could.  We had pink cake and we sang and took photos as he lay in his chair on oxygen trying to reach for her.  A month later, he was gone….

And as the dust settled and the grief came in smaller and smaller waves, art crept back in.  Through the words in that handout…It found me in my grief.  It soothed me in the brush strokes.  And so I started painting for Dad.  Not because he painted, but because he created.  And he doted on his daughter when I created.  I made myself a promise to paint once a month for him.  And I made things to decorate my kids’ bedrooms, and I copied things that were interesting to me that I found online.  I had no style, no direction.  I was just putting paint on canvas.

In 2015, we moved to Tennessee, and I saw an advertisement with the local parks and rec that they were offering a monthly painting class.  I signed up right away because it fit the docket.  One night a month, away from small children, to create a piece start to finish.  I feel so badly for my teacher.  I spent that first-year crying.  I hated everything I did.  I hated everything I let her paint over and fix.  I had never painted impressionism, and I hated not having any straight lines. But I kept coming back for those moments of respite.  Three hours to breath and put paint on canvas.  And little by little, I was learning.

So for three years that sweet lady has put up with my tears and my mess.  And slowly I’ve gone from just crying to “I don’t like this” to “I don’t hate this” to “Maybe this isn’t so bad” to “I love this one!”  I have finally come into my own.  My own style is emerging.  And no, it’s not impressionism.  It’s still the photo realism that I loved before, but it’s been improved by three years of swiping my finger through all the straight lines and my eye for shadows and light is so much better.

So that, my dear reader, is how you’ve ended up on this page.  This long journey has brought us to this.  I hope that you enjoy the things you see on my page.  I’ve put old works up for view as well as new.  I like to see how I’ve grown and all the things I’ve tried.  Sometimes I cringe at what I see, but I remember that it’s part of the journey.  I can now delight in the magic of the creation as it transforms from the simple drawing to a muddle of paint blobs into something alive that jumps off the canvas or paper.  If you have questions or would like me to create something for you, please email me at Alex@AlexAyersFineArt.com.  I would love to hear from you.

 – Alex