DVAA Member since 1998

Alden W. Cole

About:

Where I've been and what I did there: spent the first 18 years of my life on a farm in Maine. Thought I was going to become a mathematician, but a scholarship from Rhode Island School of Design convinced me to try a totally different career path. New York City beckoned, and for a decade I survived a checkered artistic career in the Big Apple as a fashion designer and illustrator, graphic designer, emerging painter. I took a six-year break back in New England - Portsmouth NH - before coming to Philadelphia in 1986 to study with a spiritual teacher - the most unforgettable character I've ever met. Thanks to his encouragement, I acquired a house which has become my home. It's my ultimate creative project, an environment like no other; a studio, gallery, and sanctuary, all in one. Wonderland: a 3-story row house in South Philly. I'm Home at Last!

Artist Statement:

“For me, Art is all about expressing external beauty via some of the many media available to contemporary artists; painting, photography, assemblage work, luminaries, home furnishings, culinary and confectionary arts, writing; wherever the creative impulse leads. As well, it's about expressing visually a sense of the internal world - the mystery of our being - that we all carry around within us. D'où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous? Those are the big questions which we all have to answer for ourselves. That's why we have Art.”