Alec DeMarco (b. 1989, Washington, USA) is a contemporary painter whose work occupies a singular space between abstraction and figuration. Raised in a blue-collar town, he drew early inspiration from folk art, medieval illustrations, and the bold, expressive graffiti adorning local train cars, a visual language that continues to shape his work.
DeMarco deepened his practice through an apprenticeship with a renowned Irezumi tattoo master in Japan, studying brush calligraphy and Japanese myths, which reinforced his intuitive, process-driven approach. Rarely sketching beforehand, he allows each painting to emerge spontaneously, preserving the raw energy and immediacy reminiscent of Wabi-Sabi philosophy.
Living with aphantasia, the inability to form mental images, DeMarco’s paintings unfold in real time as a negotiation of memory, sensation, and gesture. What may appear as lyrical abstraction is, in fact, a trace of intensely personal experience—a reflection of what he calls his “my-ness.” Line, color, and shading become grammar; the art resides in inflection, vibration, and the embrace of chance.
Influenced by CoBrA, Neo-Expressionism, and artists including de Kooning, Guston, Alechinsky, Basquiat, and Picasso, his work has been exhibited internationally in the United States, United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, and Qatar. Clients include Volvo, Stizzy, LA Deviants Media, El Silencio, and Erik Buterbaugh.
DeMarco resists labels and preconceptions. His canvases feel like maps of an interior terrain discovered through the act of painting itself. In an image-saturated world, his work insists on process over product, experience over explanation, and honesty over coherence, paintings that ask not to be decoded, but felt.