When the Painter I Loved Passed, I Picked Up My Brush Again
- Mark Alexander
- Jun 25
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 30
There are a handful of artists whose work doesn’t just speak to you—it lingers. For me, Jack Vettriano was that voice in the room, whispering stories of longing, mystery, elegance, and memory. His paintings were cinematic, romantic, and always inhabited a world that felt just a step out of reach—a world more stylish, more sincere, where men were still men and women, knowingly powerful in their grace, commanded every frame.
If Edward Hopper painted loneliness with a quiet ache, Vettriano offered its counterpart: intimacy tinged with melancholy. A happy Hopper, perhaps—but not in the simple sense. There was depth beneath his glamour, poetry in his poses, and the stories he told. Especially in his early work, he captured nostalgia not as a trend but as a place. His Europe was one of class and flirtation, of polished shoes and red lipstick, of seaside rendezvous and smoky interiors. It was, quite simply, a Europe that doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
Jack Vettriano was born Jack Hoggan on November 17, 1951, in Methil, Fife, Scotland. Raised in a working-class mining town, he left school at 16 to work in the mines before discovering his passion for art when a girlfriend gifted him a set of watercolors for his 21st birthday. Self-taught, he honed his craft by copying paintings in the Kirkcaldy Galleries and learning from Impressionist, Surrealist, and Scottish artists. His breakthrough came in 1988 when two paintings sold on opening day at the Royal Scottish Academy exhibition, propelling him to international fame with works like The Singing Butler. Vettriano passed away on March 1, 2025, in his apartment in Nice, France, at the age of 73.
His death didn’t just mark the end of an era—it sparked something deep inside me that I thought had gone quiet. It made me look inward, not just at the highlights, but at the raw, unfiltered truth of my own story. I began to revisit my past—not the polished version, but the real one. The stolen glances and shattered hearts, the restless joy of youth surging through my veins. I thought of the lonely nights wandering Staten Island, the thrill of senior year at Matawan High School, the neon glow of New York City clubs, the summer chaos of the Wildwood boardwalk, the haze-filled hookah lounges in Paterson and Steinway, and the nights that blurred into mornings.
I remembered walking in parks with nowhere to go, Atlantic City flippage runs in the middle of the night, blasting music with the windows down, young and alive.. Making out in parked cars under streetlights. Red cups, smoke, sweat, laughter. Dancing too long. Falling too hard. I remembered the cars I drove—my old Toyota Celica, low to the ground and full of attitude. I can still feel the curves of its body, how we’d wax it for hours on summer nights, joking and smoking with friends in the driveway, we had all the time in the world.
And so I picked up a pencil, actually my Apple latest gen stylus and iPad pro, then a brush. I started sketching prototypes. Twenty paintings began to take shape—each one a shard of memory, a piece of my personal mythology. Past loves, adolescent mistakes, the pulse of city lights, quiet moments of doubt, friendships lost and found, and the ghosts that still linger somewhere between the Outter and the Brooklyn bridge. These aren't just paintings. They’re scenes from a life—my life—brought back to the surface in color and oil and light. From 1998 to 2017, I tell the story of my youth in oil.
Jack told stories through gestures, glances, and shadows. He never needed a narrative caption—you felt it all in the posture, the wardrobe, the composition. I want to do the same. To tell my story in brushstrokes, framed in memory, dressed in color and silence.
Thank you, Jack, for the reminder. May your legacy only grow brighter as time moves on.
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