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MASTER OF RUST Artist Alex Milne ditched his corporate job in Auckland and moved to the Bay to focus on creating pieces inspired by the lost American dream. WO R DS A N A COT TE PH OTOS CO LI N LU NT & K I M WE S TE R S KOV
ay of Plenty artist Alex Miln is obsessed with rust. His striking, three-dimensional pieces drip and drizzle and splatter with it, each work the result of up to a thousand hours of painstaking, detailed, skilful effort. If you look closely, you can see that Alex’s rust has many, many colours in it – light and dark browns, blacks and blues, pinks and greys. “There is so much beauty in rust,” he says. “I could paint it all day.” And he pretty much does. Alex gave up his corporate job in Auckland six years ago and now works afternoon shifts at a local petrol station in Pāpāmoa so that he can paint in the mornings when the light is best. He is truly dedicated – as you need to be when it can take six months to a year to finish just one artistic creation. Alex calls his art practice ‘signtology’. His works, mostly very large, are made of wood-shape-like signs – the type of broken down, faded neon sign you might see outside a dilapidated motel in the American Midwest. Hence the rust.
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