Alex Morales – “Watercolor Paintings”

January 10 - February 14, 2016

The Uruguayan artist Alex Morales has been making art in a wide range of media from an early age, studying and refining his skills at the Museum of Fine Arts in the state of San Jose de Mayo in his home country. He earned a living in Uruguay and Buenos Aires as a successful illustrator, graphic artist, set designer and muralist before moving to the United States about nine years ago. He settled in the New York/New Jersey area, and about three years ago met a woman named Pilar in Hoboken. They fell in love, and have since married, and along the way, he fell in love with Hoboken.

“I like Hoboken because of the people and the small-town feel,” he says. “It is a very open community, a small town that offers a blend of youth and joy with elegance and maturity. The community is very vibrant and friendly.” As an artist, he is drawn to Hoboken’s architecture, and its piers and marina, as well as the mesmerizing views of the New York City skyline across the river. He can sense that the people who live here are proud of their city, and he was inspired to give them a chance to see it through his artistic interpretation.

For his six-week exhibition in the Hoboken Museum’s Upper Gallery, Morales has assembled about 15 recent paintings executed in water-based media, some in traditional watercolor and some elaborated in ink and lemon juice. They are realist works, with elements of abstraction and meticulously detailed work with a fountain pen.

Morales earned a reputation in Uruguay as a sought-after decorator for dance clubs and pubs, and today he continues to earn commissions creating art for commercial spaces, such as the large-scale mosaic mural, “Life,” that he created recently for the Orama Restaurant in Edgewater, NJ. The massive, 1,150-square-foot mural and other artistic elements adorning the restaurant took the artist the better part of 2013 and half of 2014 to realize. This year, he plans to offer private art classes, specifically drawing and painting.

Throughout his career, he has continued to produce fine art, exhibiting his work in solo and group shows in galleries and public spaces. “My next exhibition will be of small sculptures representing the most characteristic places of Hoboken,” Morales says. “These will be replicas in yeso (plaster) of the buildings and homes showing the architecture of this town.” The first of these pieces will be on view during his exhibit at the Hoboken Historical Museum, through Sunday, February 14. Learn more at the artist’s website: http://www.ajmorales.com

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.