Andrew Arkell

Artist Bio: Andrew is a Chicago based architect and painter. His current watercolor paintings are part of an ongoing series aiming to study shadow, its form, and its relationship to architectural objects and structures.
Andrew has held an interest in the arts from a young age and is primarily a self-taught artist. He is formally trained as an architect, having earned a Bachelor of Architecture in 2012 from the University of Arkansas. Throughout his studies, he used every opportunity to bring art into architecture, often choosing to hand draw many of his designs rather than using a computer like his fellow students.
It wasn’t until after obtaining a degree, while working for artist George Dombek in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that Andrew fell in love with watercolor as a medium. His time in the studio taught him many of the techniques employed in his paintings today and furthered his interest in shadows generated by structures both simple and complex, old and new.
Andrew now attempts to bring architecture into his art. His process begins by capturing subject matter in photographs taken during travels, the work commute, and any other time shadows present themselves, often unexpectedly. Many of the elements he paints are rather ordinary and utilitarian, often overlooked by those living among them, yet they are seen anew when the shadow-play is filtered through abstraction. The distillation of each image into moments of light and shadow not only allows for the celebration of each object and structure, but also facilitates the appreciation of the many intricacies that cause the light to move so beautifully.
In addition to private collections, you can find his work on display at several art shows in and around Chicago, at which he has received several top merits.