Alex Hamilton FGAvA

Born in Croydon in 1956, Alex Hamilton's journey into the art world started as a gopher working at a photographic retouching studio. Attached to this studio was a small group of illustrators who would produce work in various mediums on a freelance basis. Purely by chance, one of these saw Alex's doodling in a sketchbook and invited him to join their group: a new career beckoned. An impromptu apprenticeship of sorts followed as he basically became the gopher and runner for the illustration department, while having the opportunity to study the techniques and tricks of the trade. Eventually he became an illustrator himself and he had found his calling. 

Alex's lifelong interest in aviation was fostered by trips to Biggin Hill and the many aviation periodicals available at the time, all of which featured artwork by the likes of Michael Turner, Frank Wootton and Wilf Hardy. He would later join the Guild of Aviation Artists and become a regular visitor to the organisation's Eastern Region meetings at Duxford. Here he would show his work with it being warmly received, one painting "In the Sunlit Silence" going on to become one of his first paintings accepted to the prestigious Annual Exhibition of 2003 at the Mall Galleries in London and winning "Aviation Painting of the Year". 

Over twenty years later and Alex is a well-established aviation artist who has left commercial illustration behind  and has been bestowed with the rank of Fellow by the Guild, the highest accolade an artist in the organisation can achieve.