The watercolors of Alexander Purves are made from the direct observation of nature. Rock formations are a recurrent subject, their aspect varying from moment to moment with the changing quality of the light.  Most of the rock paintings are made on a small island in the St. Lawrence River, where he spends part of each summer.  He has drawn and painted all his life.

Purves received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Architecture degrees from Yale.  He has been active as an architect in New York and New Haven and has been a member of the faculty of the School of Architecture since 1976, teaching design studios at all levels. For the last nine years, together with Stephen Harby, he  has been leading an intensive drawing seminar in Rome for graduate architecture students.

Solo exhibitions of Purves’s watercolors have been held at the Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City in 2006 and 2010, and his work has been featured in group shows at the Washington (CT) Art Association (1987, 1992, 2003, 2009), the Woodbury Gallery of Antiques and Fine Art (2004) and the New Arts Gallery in Litchfield (2004, 2006, 2007). In 2002 his travel drawings were exhibited at the Hunter College Leubsdorf Gallery in New York in a show entitled “On Site”, which also included work by Buzz Yudell and Stephen Harby.

Artin           Beebe           Eck           Harby          Purves          Yudell