Nathaniel Alapide is a Filipino artist who loves to paint but works with out-of-the-box materials, because the only things he needs to create his masterpiece are sand and a garden rake.
Alapide is a Filipino artist currently residing in Dubai who has been turning heads left and right with his masterful shapes and forms painted in sand using a garden rake.
Some of his works include recreations of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. Aside from these famous paintings, Alapide also paints original artworks.
“I don’t really have an idea of what I will be drawing until I get out on to the beach and wait for the spark of a design to come to me,” Nathaniel said in an interview with The National.
Alapide started to discover his fascination with creativity at the age of nine, he told Illustrado Life.
“My father brought home an art book that contained the works of Picasso, Monet, Matisse and all the other great painters. It really piqued my interest as a young kid, so I began to research more about them and their works. Then a whole new dimension of imagination opened itself up for me. I started to express myself by drawing and painting, just like the artists that I was studying, and I was hooked,” Alapide explained.
His interest in sand art started in 2014. His love for the beaches of Dubai inspired him to use its sands as canvas for his artworks.
“I’ve always loved going to the beaches here in Dubai early in the morning, and I would always find myself staring at the contrast between the loose sand and the compacted sand that would always appear after the tide has receded. Then one day I realized that it is possible to use it as a canvas, so I started drawing on it and it felt good,” Alapide shared.
Today, Alapide’s work continues to garner attention from tourists and locals of Dubai. He shares his works in his Instagram and Facebook accounts.
