Alan King

I was born in Ireland and came to Canada with my family as a child. I've been drawing compulsively since I was very young - filling a sketchbook every week and going to the bookstore on Saturday mornings to get a new one. Formal art training, for better or worse, is something I never had but I made up for it with intensive reading and practice, practice, practice. It's something I learned from my training as a classical pianist. I still play a couple of hours a day.
I've been painting in oils since I received my first set of paints when I was eleven and have never stopped.
For quite a while I was an editorial cartoonist at a daily newspaper. There's a huge collection of my work in the National Archives. I also wrote a weekly column on the visual arts.
Now my life is consumed by art. Just as I did when I began I experiment with different techniques, colour palettes and compositions - always searching for a way to say something new and different visually.

I studied classical music at university and eventually graduated with a degree in English Lit.

My last solo show was at The Twist Gallery, Queen Street W. in Toronto in November.