Alex Malcolmson was born in Shetland in 1955 and studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art.
“Most of the work I have done over the past ten years or so has been in the form of box constructions made mainly from wood; carved and painted, sometimes using found materials. Perhaps in common with other artists making ‘boxworks’, Joseph Cornell is an unavoidable influence as is that lovely period of Picasso’s work when he seemed to find everything he needed lying around on the studio floor, but another strand of interest for me lies in ship dioramas and other marine folk art. The slatted birds started with the idea of an upturned boat, which is a motif I have often used in other ways, they also draw on the tradition of decoy making. Folk, naïve and primitive art; the kind of objects made for use and ornament, often by unnamed makers, is probably the main source of ideas for the work.