Alexandra Simondetti, a child of a large and artistic family, painted her first mural when she was 12. Soon her mother’s house was filled with imaginary landscapes, tropical flowers and exotic animals. Her passion to take everyday objects, furniture and plain painted walls and turn them into make-believe worlds has grown ever since.
Born in Montreal, Alexandra was educated in England and studied photography at the London College of Printing. Falling in love with an Italian architect, she also began a love affair with the culture and arts of the country. Inspired by Roman and Renaissance paintings, she developed her technique of trompe l’oeil painting many commissions in Rome.
As her reputation grew, Alexandra won commissions for mural works in Spain, New York and Phoenix in USA, Bermuda, the United Arab Emirates and other places. She has a passion for nature and her art is increasingly filled with plants, fruit, vegetables and flowers, drawing on her interest in ornamental gardens. Many of her trompe l’oeil paintings include personal touches like portraits of her client’s pets.
Alexandra has worked with artists and crafts persons from around the world. She collaborated with the shell grotto specialist Diana Reynell. Living in Hong Kong for three years during the period following the handover to China, she worked with a Cantonese ceramicist developing a passion for working on the wheel and glazing stoneware and porcelain.
Having a love of bright and vibrant Indian colours, one of her commissions led Alexandra to using the “holi” /”gulal” pigments, traditionally used in India to celebrate the arrival of Spring- these abstracts have been very successful brightening dull spaces. She has undertaken the interior design of private homes as well as shops, this has involved the choosing of furniture and fabrics, commissioning pieces made- to-order as well as directing painters.
Living back in London for the last fourteen years, she has also reconstructed a house with her husband, assisted in a gallery and managed to get away for short commissions abroad. Today Alexandra is able to work in a range of mediums in intimate spaces such as the home or in more public areas. Having studied design at Kew Gardens, she looks more and more at how she can combine her love of nature and bring tranquillity and harmony into our living spaces.
