Born in Southsea
in 1960 and studied for a Diploma in Illustration at Southampton
College. Aldo now lives in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of
France. Beginning his career as a freelance illustrator his work
appeared in and on the front covers of numerous magazines including
the Sunday Times Culture Magazine, TV Times and Punch. Aldo is
now a recognized and successful figurative and portrait artist.
REVIEW: Tim Green,
August 2008 - London
Leonardo DaVinci said: to be a good painter is to paint
two main things: men and the working of mans mind: the
first is the easier of the two. Its a quote that
has always resonated with Aldo. He admits to being a restless
painter, never entirely happy with his work and always
striving to improve his technique.
Its tempting
for us, the viewers, to wonder where these improvements can be
made, such is Aldos apparent mastery of his art. Every
one of his exquisitely mysterious vignettes is masterfully realized.
For example, in a recent piece titled Odessey VI
two figures each at a different angle to the viewer, creased
jackets throwing awkward shadows across the early evening town
square, is flawless.
We shouldnt
be surprised. For all the modesty of Aldo, this is a painter
who has dedicated his adult life to mastering the technical challenges
of figurative art. Working as a storyboard illustrator for advertising
agencies, he developed a passion for anatomy and honed his craft
until he could draw the human form effortlessly from any angle.
There was a simple commercial reason for this if you can
draw people convincingly without the need for models, its
cheaper. But the discipline also appealed to Aldos aesthetic
curiosity.
Today, as a full
time painter choosing his subjects, Aldo remains dedicated to
the human form. But he puts his formal virtuosity at the service
of human drama. Virtually all of his paintings buzz with narrative
possibilities. Who are the three inscrutable men in Conversation
III? What are they planning? What have they just done? What are
they going to do? And what about the couple in The Early Hours?
Are they lovers? If so, is their affair bursting into life or
fracturing?
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Aldo is proud
to admit hes in the storytelling business, even if he lets
us fill in the gaps. I always try to put an element of
mystery in my work, he says. You can suggest so much
in a gesture, in the way someone stands. I like narrative in
painting, because it casts the viewer into a voyeuristic role.
The pull of suggested
narrative explains why so many of the figures in Aldos
work have their backs to us. When a person is face-on,
its a portrait, and the mystique is gone, explains
Aldo. Many of these backs belong, of course, to the be-suited
men that appear throughout the artists work. The prevalence
of so many jackets and ties has promoted some to describe Aldos
work as nostalgic. This is something hes keen to move away
from. I prefer to think of the scenes I depict as timeless.
They are little dramas that could be from any era.
But the suits
will remain. Simply, Aldo loves the formal challenge posed by
all those silken creases. Indeed, hes recently applied
himself to improving the way he renders the kind of sharp and
soft edges we see in a painting such as the aforementioned Osyssey
VI. It might sound highly pedantic to the rest of us edges?
but this dedication to detail is what makes Aldo such
a terrific craftsman. And this collection of formally superb
and profoundly mysterious paintings proves it yet again.
MAGAZINE ARTICLES:
Artist International (Issue 22) - Front Cover. Artist International
(Issue 27) - 5 page feature
Artists and Illustrators
Artist and Illustrator Magazine
COMMISSIONS
AND MAJOR COLLECTIONS:
British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
Lady Laura Paul
The Frieder Burda Museum in Baden Baden Germany bought 2 works
for their collection
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