In summer of 1980 Alan Cheek cranked up his old pickup and set out to visit the coastal lighthouses of North Carolina. The initial result was the simple, but elegant painting 'The Hatteras Light',but more significantly,this was the beginning of his professional career.

Born in Graham, NC in 1951, Alan's innate artistic talent manifest itself early in drawings using charcoal, pastels, pencil, and oil paintings of landscape, still life, and wild life. This early work revealed the illustrative manner apparent in artistic children, but also a more advanced concern for lighting, shading, and color. Alan's abilities and attention to detail can be seen in his extended family as well as his mother's fine oil painting and his father's ability as a wood carver and a mechanical engineer. These influences helped to guide and mold his artistic vision and offerings as a young man.

Alan's only formal study came at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 70's, with a professorship attuned to the modernist approach to painting. Incorporating abstraction, impressionism, and non-objectivity with his core beliefs in realism were only somewhat fruitful, yet Alan believes this study was beneficial, giving him a balanced background in understanding painting. These years produced some of Alan's more unusual work.

After school his art career took a back seat to working as a carpenter on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Learning the structural balances of construction and how to make things fit together, transferred into Alan's painting architecture as well as landscapes of the scenic island. With an increasing affinity for coastal subjects Alan moved back near his North Carolina roots to the capital city of Raleigh, where we began our story.

"The Hatteras Light" was Alan's first limited edition reproduction in 1982. Highly successful, it was followed by other reproductions of "Swansboro", "Ocracoke", and "Old Baldy". The success of these paintings led Alan to relocate to the old port town of Beaufort on the North Carolina coast in 1984. The Beaufort destination was steeped in historic traditions and the perfect place for Alan to open Down East Gallery to showcase his coastal artwork.

With the enthusiasm that accompanies one in the midst of their chosen element, Alan continues to be on of North Carolina's premiere coastal artists. His recognizable style evokes appreciable clarity and detail, balanced composition, a three dimensional execution, and vivid yet judicious use of color, which may be the most outstanding aspect of his work. His style can be termed transitional, with the fine detail of traditional realism and the wildly vivid colors of impressionism, animating a luminescent quality. It is rare in this day to find an artist with the ability to incorporate the influence of such artistic schools into a style so recognizable as his own.