Family Portrait, 2007
(Oil on canvas)

Alex Crocker graduated from Brighton University in 2005 with a BA in Fine Art and has exhibited in group shows around the UK. ‘I constantly gather images that stimulate me: newspaper clippings, photographs, sketches and reproductions from art history; anything that gives me the spark to begin a painting.” He describes his work as addressing death and decay within natural growth and the way in which we deal with it. “With advances in genetic modification mankind has the power to control the evolution of nature. I want to temper and corrupt the idea of the world as a place of wonder with a fear of what would happen if it all went wrong.” Crocker attempts, through the physical act of painting, to obliterate the original image, which is “discarded in the pursuit of germinating new forms, leaving the initial reference as a trace element or fossil contained within the image”.

Editor's choice

• The super cool Vampire Weekend
• Streep and Baldwin get complicated
• Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes