 My name is Alexander Betko. I live in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and I'm a realist painter, classically trained. My work mostly is figurative and it really revolves about life in New York City. It is somewhere between the intersection of isolation and intimacy. The topic matter that I choose are people that I know that we've shared personal stories. They've told me. We've identified with each other on many different levels. And they sat for me. So to come into the studio, there's preliminary drawings that I have done, there's photography that I do, and there's something magical that exists in that moment. There's something really special that happens. Something comes to life. I know what I'm after. The model becomes comfortable with me. There's this communication. It's a great amount of intimacy. When I came to this country, I came from Poland. Poland was in a very turbulent state at the time. Little did we know what we stumbled upon when we came to the United States. I saw New York City during the 80s. It was edgy. It was dangerous. It was wild. It was electric. It was incredibly creative. People lived out loud. So there was this juxtaposition that I saw very early on as a child. These are the things that were indelibly burned into my consciousness. And it was kind of a crossing of two worlds. That's a recurring theme in my work. There's an edge. There's something that is ugly. But out of it all also comes incredibly large amounts of beauty.