Alex Martinez is an arts educator of 17 years and currently teaches at the Jersey City Arts High School.  Though he is mainly a self-taught realist portrait artist, he received his first formal art training with the Da Vinci Initiative in 2014 in order to elevate his educational experiences by bringing classical skills-based training and academia back into the classroom.  As an arts educator his approach to education focuses on the process of classical drawing and painting techniques, artistic expression, portfolio development and providing a supportive skill-based artistic experience.  He is currently continuing his training with the Florence Academy of Arts where he will attain his MFA with the School of Atelier in the Summer of 2023.  Alex has gauged his artistic career as an educator first and a contemporary fine artist second.  Focusing on his personal artistic expressions in realism as a means to create a bridge between the classical styles of portraiture and the illustrative contemporary visual language.

Alex’s approach to his drawings and paintings centers around portraits that invite the viewer to engage in inquisitive conversations through a visual and narrative language of the human experience.  His works draw inspiration from William Bouguereau, Stephen Bauman, Francisco Rodon, Nicholas Sanchez, Bezt Etam, and Kehinde Wiley.  Trained in atelier and realism, along with having a confounding love of the illustrative, his work and teachings derive from his own personal experiences and the experiences he encounters daily as a public school educator. 

Alex currently works on portraits in between teaching classes and his home studio in West Orange, NJ. 

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