Alexander Guy paints loo rolls, ashtrays, and iced buns as vividly as artists used to paint vases of flowers, bowls of fruit and glasses of wine. He paints what he calls the ‘tacky realism’ of modern life The urgency and stark freshness in his work doesn’t spring from a sense of loss or separation but from an appetite for life, a hunger to see everything as clearly as he can while he can. ?

His life in art has been a roller coaster ride , from Scotland to London, to America to the South of France, picking up popular culture wherever he goes, to a backtrack of the music heard in bars. He paints where people are, the worlds ordinary folk inhabit.

In a recent project, he took over a unit in a shopping cen...