Ali Alamdar

ABOUT ALI ALAMDAR

Kuwaiti born, Houston based award-winning contemporary portrait artist Ali Alamdar started his art journey in 2016 by making a simple portrait drawing, which unbeknownst to him, eventually lead to everything else. Alamdar moved to Texas when he was 12-years old and went back and forth between the two places until coming back to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Marketing degree from the University of Houston.

Alamdar credits his picking up of the arts to the fact he was always surrounded by art. He has always been inspired by his grandparents’ drawings as a child and was taught how to shade and create different values using graphite pencils at the age of 4. The simple knowledge of how to shade made it easier for Ali to start drawing since he possessed a very simple understanding on how to create forms, which he later built on and developed into something much bigger; a lifestyle and a burning passion.

Ali Alamdar is recognized for his incomplete paintings that depict figures and portraits with missing areas, most notably the lips. Alamdar is fascinated with incompleteness and imperfections and states that he creates his art in an attempt to spread the perspective he has on imperfections and hopes that people start seeing the beauty in it as well and begin embracing them rather than wasting their entire lives seeking impossible, and unattainable perfection. Alamdar also states that “Life itself is incomplete, it never is complete until the person passes away. Until then, they are, and will always be just a work in progress”. Ali gets inspiration for his works from everything around him, one example he always brings up is that of buildings in the process of being built, surrounded by scaffolding and unused materials that will eventually be utilized and turned into something spectacular. 

Alamdar’s main goal with his paintings is to create something that seems to be frozen in time, on its way to being finished and fully complete, but never will be. It creates a sense of dynamism and creates a timeless look that will not look outdated in a few years. “What I love the most and what I try to do with all my paintings is that I make them look like I will come back and finish them someday. But I keep my works in the stage between having an empty canvas, and a fully rendered painting, it’s just more interesting to me and has a lot of hidden meanings.”

Q&A

• How would you describe your work?

  I would describe my work as contemporary portraiture, while also staying true to realistic human anatomy and features (for the time being).

• What is the meaning behind your work?

  I try to capture the beauty in imperfection, that’s the general and basic idea for all of my paintings, but every painting has a different specific meaning to it. I’ve been focusing more on the narrative and meaning of my paintings lately instead of just making things that look good and it’s been more fun and creates better paintings!

• Why did you start doing art?

  It started around 2003 when I saw my grandparents drawings, the drawings inspired me at the time and thought they were amazing. My grandmother actually taught me how to shade using a napkin, and that was the earliest memory I have on blending graphite. I’ve always been interested in drawing but never actually practiced it seriously until 2016. I started practicing art seriously then and kept doing it and here we are now.

• How do you pick the colors you use in your paintings?

  I don’t think that much about the colors I use in my paintings anymore, I usually have a basic idea of the color palette I’ll use and that’s about it. I used to spend a lot of time trying to pick colors perfectly and meticulously, but that just created so much stress and I never ended up liking what I made. Now I just focus heavily on getting correct color values and that makes all colors on earth work together. I also sometimes get inspired by interior design, other artworks, and just life in general for the colors I use.

• Who is the artist that inspires you the most?

  There are a few, but the person I look up to and get inspired by the most is Ryan Hewett, his works is magnificent. I love his older works and how bold they are, it is insanely difficult to capture likeness of a person without adding facial features and he does it so well and it just leaves me in awe. and his bold strokes is what I aspire to be able to do.

• What paints do you use?

  I mainly use Winsor & Newton and Michael Harding. I also use a few paints from Gamblin and Williamsburg as well, those are the brands I tend to stick with.

• What paint brushes do you use?

  I only use Rosemary & Co brushes because they are the best brushes I have ever used. I put together the Ali Alamdar bush set with Rosemary & Co for you to buy and start using the materials I use and love. You can buy the brush set following this link: https://www.rosemaryandco.com/ali-alamdar?u=aalamdar, Don’t forget to use code AALAMDAR on checkout!

• 10 Artists that inspire you:

  • Ryan Hewett

  • Walt Disney

  • Andrew Cadima

  • Jenny Saville

  • Norman Rockwell

  • Yulia Bas

  • Loribelle Spirovski

  • Henrik Uldalen

  • Alpay Efe

  • Andrew Salgado

• All artworks are available for sale unless stated otherwise, for inquiries, visit the contact page or email alialamdart@gmail.com