Alex Heim

In this new series of works, Heim takes a closer look at the moments before or after action. Where an intake of breath, or danger, or affection, creates something palpable. He has the belief that art is found in the suggestion and the mystery, and it is in these moments where we can ask questions and can find fulfilment from an image.

In an attempt to make beautiful images, Heim often focuses on the man-made compared with the natural and where these forces intersect. Paintings can be a chance to understand or question parts of life that are not clear to him. Whether that is why something engineered can feel so abstract, and the natural so figurative.

By attempting to translate scenes or people into paintings, Heim looks closely at expressions of the body, the nuances of movement, shape, material, light and contours. This helps to create something closer to reality. A fluency in another person's expressions or space can be a chance to rationalise the artist’s own reality.

When we look closer at these moments something more abstract often appears. Wanting to find that breaking point between interactions on the brink of something and a proximity that creates something abstract. Metrics of time and distance become tools for his image making.

He is constantly in search of that breaking point, described “like a dog chasing its tail” fuelled by the longing, the chase, the playing. He hopes this body of work expresses that.

Alex Heim is a British artist based in Somerset, where he grew up after returning from London, having completed a degree in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins. His interdisciplinary background informs a distinctive approach to painting, shaped by an education that emphasised dynamism, context, and the ways in which work is interpreted.

The rural landscape and its complexities form the foundation of much of his practice. Through painting, Heim explores questions about life by making them personal, using the medium as a way to examine uncertainty, emotion, and experience.

His figurative works often draw on themes of sentimentality, nature, and human behaviour, distilling relationships and feeling into carefully observed forms. He approaches painting as an inherently artificial challenge - one that embraces uncertainty, tension, and resolution in equal measure.

Committed to developing his practice largely outside institutional structures, Heim has forged an unconventional path while steadily gaining recognition. His work has been exhibited at Central Saint Martins' Fine Art Open Studios, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2023), and a group exhibition with the Serving the People Foundation (2024). In 2025, he presented his first solo exhibition, Horse Play , at 8 Holland Street's St James's flagship gallery. More recently, he produced a series of commissioned drawings for Paul Smith's Made in British Isles 2026 campaign.

Image: Alex Heim photographed in his studio by Henry Roberts