Mick Ross

Alex Gross is a visual artist who specializes in oil paintings on canvas. His themes include globalization, commerce, mayhem and the remorseless passage of time. He graduated in 1990 from Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, CA. Since then, he has become established as an artist in the Pop Surrealism movement.

In 2000, Alex received a fellowship from the Japan Foundation. He spent two months traveling throughout Japan, researching and collecting a wide variety of Japanese Fine and Commercial art, as research for his own artwork. In 2007, Chronicle books published The Art of Alex Gross, a monograph featuring Alex’s painting, drawing and printmaking from 1999 through 2007. His art has been featured in numerous publications including Communication Arts and The Los Angeles Times.

Alex’s work has been described as a part of the “lowbrow” movement which has origins in comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Alex’s version of that are requires some knowledge of culture, history and politics.

One of the things that caught my attention was his use of old portraits which he painted over to make them resemble super heroes. There are dozens of them along with the rest of his art that you can see on his website.