The Paris Review: Alan Fears Featured in the Summer Issue
Alan Fears has been featured on the cover of the Summer 229 issue of The Paris Review.
‘After what feels like a long winter and a complicated spring, let’s admit to an intense longing for the summer’s simple pleasures: those divine evening breezes; those long, sharp shadows; an insistence on slower-paced living. Burned shoulders and mosquito bites be damned, we still crave it all.
British artist Alan Fears craves it all too. Having given up on painting for nearly twenty years, after traditional art school programs left him bogged down by formal theory, Fears returned to his brushes in his late thirties. His reputation has been steadily growing ever since. In 2018, he was short-listed for the John Moores Painting prize, England’s premier contemporary painting award, and he contributed work to the famed Summer Exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. He now devotes himself entirely to “learning how to use paint”.
Fears approaches his work with a refreshing lack of ego and a good deal of humour. His many portraits celebrate our ever vulnerable, often awkward humanness. In bold, naive strokes and deliciously riotous colours, his canvases serve up the best of what the summer months offer.’ Charlotte Strick
