Alex Sandvoss' eye-catching oil paintings evolved from portraits of Vancouver's downtown Eastside community to evocative political pieces featuring Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Jeff Bezos.
But the Surrey-born artist says these pieces share a common thread despite the striking juxtaposition of subject matter.
Sandvoss tells V.I.A. she started painting while attending music school at McGill University in Montreal. She was playing jazz saxophone and using art to relieve stress. The pastime evolved into a passion and she started rushing home and staying in on the weekends to paint.
When Sandvoss moved back to Metro Vancouver, she worked at an art supply store in the DTES and made fast friends with a Megaphone Magazine vendor named Pat. After he agreed to let her paint him, Sandvoss started painting more locals in the community.
"I started my whole career by making paintings of people in the downtown Eastside," she explains. "They are so kind and society ignores so many people. We are so concerned with our own survival as the disparity grows between rich and poor; the middle class is shrinking."
Megaphone came on as a sponsor for the emerging artist and she was able to donate back to the community.
Sandvoss makes her paintings political
In 2023, Sandvoss made a series of political paintings including Trump, Musk, Bezos, and major U.S. business or political figures. She describes her Rembrandt-inspired "A Hapless Toad" as a "knee-jerk reaction to Roe v. Wade." In the parody painting, Trump holds forceps while several conservative-leaning Supreme Court justices, along with Kentucky Senator Mitchell McConnell, hover over a corpse. The painting is a nod to Rembrandt's 1632 masterpiece "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp," where the instructor gives an anatomy lesson on an executed criminal.
"I was so sad about the rollback on Roe v Wade. I thought of a dead woman on a table. That could be anyone who needs an abortion. The risk can be fatal," she notes.
Sandvoss says she's been asked how she made the individuals appear "so creepy" but she explains she used official U.S. political portraits as inspiration.
She chose the title "Hapless Toad" as a reaction to a developer of a planned Nevada geothermal power plant that said it intended to sue U.S wildlife officials to overturn the endangered species listing of a toad in adjacent wetlands.
Sandvoss' Elon Musk portrait features the tech mogul turned political figure in dapper 19th-century attire with lace blossoming from his collar. He's holding a document for the United Nations World Food Programme, which he had promised to donate six billion to.
"He said he was this saviour and was going to solve world hunger. The UN gave him the plan. He promised to donate 6 billion," she said.
Several depictions of Jeff Bezos are featured in Sandvoss' "Green New Deal," which is another Rembrandt parody, this one of the "Syndics of the Drapers' Guild." The "Jeff" on the left is sitting on a chair with two dates written on it: one is when Amazon workers banded together to unionize and the other is when they demanded the company to adopt a climate plan. The table has the Green New Deal, which addresses climate change.
"This is a parody. The original one is a bunch of cloth inspectors [and] has all different men. I wanted it to be all Jeff to show power concentration. Underneath the table, hands are reaching out from under the table. Are those workers? Are those consumers? I wanted to leave that for people to decide," the artist explains.
Consumer culture: Work to buy depicted in art
Sandvoss also explores themes related to advertising and consumer culture. She borrowed the story of Sisyphus from Greek mythology to depict the way capitalism affects people. In the story, Zeus punishes Sisyphus for becoming immortal and forces him to push a boulder up a hill for eternity. Every time he reaches the summit, it is pushed back down. In her image, the boulder is a Louis Vuitton bag.
In another piece, she depicts Barbie as religious iconography, highlighting how society views superficial items.
The Seattle International Airport (SEA) also purchased a pair of her paintings depicting Amazon employees as workhorses, underscoring how they said the company treated them.
"I exhibit internationally, have won awards for my work, and have had paintings collected by both the Vancouver International Airport and the Seattle airport," she notes.
Sandvoss' hopes her current exhibition will spark dialogue and make people think deeply about the world. While she has gained international attention for her pieces featuring big names and companies, her work started by focusing on everyday people - and she still hopes people will see that.
"Art has historically been reserved for nobility and I wanted to showcase the beauty of the common person," she says.
"I wanted them to be seen."
Sandvoss' work is on display at The Reach Museum in Abbotsford at 32388 Veterans Way until March 8, 2025.
With a file from the Associated Press.
