In the Autumn of 2021, Alex Corina @alexcorina_art asked me to help him get his studio back into working order. This involved lots of trips to the local dump and the café for lunch. Is this what an artist’s assistant does.? I delivered prints and calendars to galleries and customers, chauffeured Alex to various medical appointments and fine art printers.

Later in the Spring of 2022 Alex started the role of a Resident Artist at @liveveryplay Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre. This was a 6 month posting with fellow artist Laleh Kamalian @laleh_kamalian_art . Within a couple of weeks, Alex had produced many pen and ink drawings based around the characters from Jonathan Larkin’s @jonny_larkin play “Cherry Jezebel”. I suggested to Alex that he could add colour to the drawings digitally and could try different colour combinations without having to redraw his original pieces. He was sceptical at first, as he had done no digital artwork before. He was worried that his work would look different from his ‘style’.

I showed him how to use @procreate on the iPad and within an hour; he had produced his first piece. Over the following few months, he had created dozens of pen and ink studies, coloured pencil drawings, a couple of large paintings, and innumerable digital pieces.

His tenure at the Everyman has now ended. It culminated in an Open Studio show at His Studio “Garston Artworks” and a Finale Show at the Everyman where he displayed his traditional work alongside large-format prints of his digital work.

I’m proud to have worked with Alex over the past year and opened his eyes to the possibilities of digital art. Who knows? He might buy his own iPad now.

You CAN teach an old dog new tricks!