Alec DeMarco was born in 1989 in Cathlamet, Washington. His practice moves between drawing, painting, calligraphy and tattooing. It sits on the border between abstraction and figuration.

He grew up in a working-class community, far from the art world. His earliest creative memories are domestic. His grandmother would draw while watching Bob Ross on television. Then came the posters and graffiti on freight trains. It was his first real encounter with art. Yet he discovered his talent by chance, in a compulsory drawing class at university. Encouraged by a teacher, he sent a portfolio to art schools in the United States and Europe. Accepted by almost all of them, he then moved to California to study. There, for the first time, he visited a museum and a gallery. His curiosity soon extended to folk art and medieval illumination.

He first made illustrations for magazines and brochures. Yet he had to leave art school in his third year for financial reasons. He then turned to tattooing and committed himself entirely. For three years, he lived and learned every day alongside his Japanese master. He followed him wherever he traveled. He discovered brush calligraphy and Japanese mythology. It is full of deities, heroes and yōkai, the mischievous or benevolent spirits of folklore. The idea that every object might have a soul never left him. In his abstract shapes, an eye sometimes opens to look back at the viewer.

Painting from Memory

Alec DeMarco lives with aphantasia, the inability to form mental images. He therefore works from memory, drawing on impressions and sensations. Leaves, flowers and eyes become forms at once familiar and archetypal. He seeks to capture the feeling things evoke rather than their appearance. The eye, a recurring motif, is for him what reveals a person’s character and intentions.

Alec DeMarco follows a precise process. He first draws the lines in ink, then fills the spaces with color, “like a child coloring by numbers.” Yet he never tries to “finish” a work. Circular lines, fluid curves and movement have become the hallmarks of his language. He draws on folk art, graffiti, tattooing and color theory. His work also belongs to the lineage of CoBrA and Neo-Expressionism. He cites de Kooning, Guston, Basquiat and Picasso, but refuses to belong to any movement. For him, process matters more than outcome. The studio is thus above all a place of calm.

The Beast and the Boy in Paris

His work has been exhibited in the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany and Qatar. In 2024, Galerie 75 Faubourg in Paris presented The Beast and the Boy. The exhibition was organized with Corridor Contemporary (Tel Aviv) and Galerie Enrico Navarra. It brought together works on canvas and paper made in 2022 and 2023.