Andrew Alba

Andrew Alba is a prolific artist with a nontraditional background and a genuine love of communicating through thick, gestural application of oil paint and utilization of repurposed construction materials. Some career highlights to date are being an artist-in-residence and exhibiting artist at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and receiving a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Utah Division of Arts and Museums.

Borrowing techniques of abstraction from neoexpressionists, Alba’s work aims to evoke an emotional response while commenting on our wildly complex sociopolitical present. As a self-taught artist, he creates work apart from the theoretical constraints and critical expectations of the academy.

Alba juxtaposes the clean white walls of the gallery with the rough-hewn, everyday materials of the worker. While drop cloths, drywall, mud, concrete and lumber are not of traditional gallery “quality,” he is interested in how these materials will resonate with working people.