XANDER COY

Xander Coy is a painter and collagist. He employs a range of techniques using acrylic, oil, ink, enamel and spray paint.

Heavily influenced by the imagery of Pop Art, Collage and Surrealism he draws on a variety of visuals for his own work, ranging from vintage 1950’s posters to modern day cartoons.

Drawn to collage because of the boundless creative possibilities it has to offer Coy juxtaposes seemingly disparate images to create a narrative. Narratives of escapism, yearning, vulnerability and transience are often the result.

Coy is fascinated with semiotics – how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated is often at the forefront of his thoughts when creating work. Signs and symbols such as traffic lights or emojis regularly appear in his works often slightly altered, reinvented or recontextualised to give a different meaning. In the same way a kid might draw a smiley face over a picture of a circled sun or a moustache over a face Coy displays a childlike desire to recreate and re invent familiar images when painting.

Integral to each composition is his mixture of both realism and abstraction creating a dissonance in the mind when you explore the paintings – the same sensation experienced during a dream when things do not make sense but there is actually meaning to it somewhere.

Working on canvas as well on the streets each image is brimming with contrasting colour, pattern, scale, light and shade. Regularly using a hot or cold palette (or occasionally both), surprising harmonies are generated through vibrant chromatic extremes. Colour is king – a realm of constant pleasure.

Having studied drawing and painting at the Slade School of Art, Coy has shown his work at a number of galleries across the UK including Jealous Gallery and Saatchi Gallery. Working from his hometown London, Coy continues to exhibit across the UK and beyond.