Alex Allardyce first noticed Bermuda’s decorative building blocks after moving to the island in 2017.

A carpenter suggested he and his husband, Brenton Tucker, replace the decorative blocks on their veranda with cedar.

“The carpenter thought the blocks were extremely unfashionable and something we should be getting rid of,” Mr Allardyce said. “He suggested we board in the veranda with cedar, but I liked the blocks.”

After that he started seeing decorative blocks all over Bermuda.

“They are pretty ubiquitous here and nobody seems to like them very much,” he said. “For Bermuda, they are really practical. You don’t have to paint them. They are pretty maintenance-free. They do the job and let air circulate. I like practical things.”

Their patterns became the inspiration for a full-time artist career in painting, printmaking and sculpture.

His cardboard sculpture Block (Dissected Sphere) was selected for the Bermuda National Gallery’s 2026 Bermuda Biennial. He described it as a transformation of a Bermuda concrete-block pattern into a sculpture:

“It is a sphere that's been cut into eight pieces and then almost peeled out,” he explained.

One of his paintings was also shown in the BNG’s 2022 Biennial. It was based on the same block pattern.

His interest expanded to older timber balustrades, sometimes called gingerbread.

Their varied framework patterns also became a source of fascination for him.

One of his paintings inspired by the gingerbread framework was presented to Birgitte, Duchess of Gloucester, when she visited the island a year ago.

“She was very nice,” the artist said. “She asked intelligent questions and listened to the answers.”

His work is now held in many private, public and corporate collections and he has exhibited at Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art in Paget.

He grew up in Greenock, an industrial town on the west coast of Scotland. His father was an engineer and his mother a school dinner lady.

“The town used to have shipbuilding, sugar refining and a big IBM computer factory,” he said. “None of that exists any more. High unemployment is a problem. It needs somebody inspiring to jilt it out of its current phase.”

He was running an architectural firm in Islington, North London, when he met his future husband 26 years ago. Mr Tucker was there working in reinsurance.

“We were one of the few gay couples to be married in Bermuda during that brief time that you could do it,” Mr Allardyce said.

They moved to the island permanently. Initially, he meant to continue his architectural practice on the rock but his qualifications were not recognised. It would have meant taking new exams and starting a client base from scratch.

“I retired from architecture and started doing art, which is what I’d always wanted to do,” he said.

Mr Allardyce has made prints based on those designs, including a series connected with an exhibition at Masterworks. He said an edition of the prints was sold to support fundraising for an art and design centre.

He works out of a basement studio in his home.

“It means I have got space to make a mess,” he said. “The only thing is there is no air conditioning down there, making it quite sweaty in August.”

When he is painting or making prints, he cannot even turn a fan on for fear it will blow dust on to the work.

Printmaking has become an important part of his practice partly because it allows him to offer work at more accessible prices. Some paintings took so long to make that he had to charge thousands of dollars, limiting who could afford them. With prints, he can produce editions and bring the price down.

He is working on a set of five prints, each using four colours, based on his sculpture. At the time of the interview, two colours were complete and the prints were drying in the basement.

Mr Allardyce said the hardest part was the initial thought.

“Once you grasp that and manage to convince yourself that it is going to be a good idea, the momentum builds itself from there,” he said.

He hopes that people get simple pleasure and enjoyment from his work.

“I love colour,” he said. “A lot of people are just frightened of it but you need it in your life.”

The Biennial is on now at the Bermuda National Gallery at City Hall in Hamilton and runs until next March.

• For more information, seewww.alexallardyceart.com