‘So much of living is about an experience’

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My family is spread everywhere. My dad lives in Boston, a bunch of my other family lives in Brooklyn, my brother is in Dallas, and I also have family in Jamaica. During the holidays I try to see as many people as possible, but it’s more difficult now that everybody has moved all over. It’s not like when we were younger and everybody was in one place.

Normally I see my parents and then go to a bunch of different aunts’ houses. If everybody is up for it, we’ll go see a movie but we don’t go to the cinema as much now. All my brothers and sisters are older — I have a large blended family with seven siblings on my mum’s side and four on my dad’s — and they have kids, so they’ll do it at their house.

Everybody cooks. One of my aunts always makes plantains. Otherwise we have food like mac and cheese, a Christmas ham, jerk chicken because my stepmom is Jamaican, and curry chicken from the Grenadian and Trinidadian side. We also do rice and peas. The food depends on which family I’m going to. We also take a family photo at the end of the meal. When we were kids, I would get an Eddie Bauer or Old Navy Christmas sweater, but now we keep it casual. 

I like essentials like a great pair of socks, a great scarf and a great T-shirt

I still work during the holidays. I’m drawing every day. I don’t think there’s a day that I’m not sketching or working through something. I try to make my studio wherever I am. A tricky thing about the creative fields is that it isn’t a nine to five. I know some writers and artists who do treat it as that, but my mind doesn’t really work like that.

At this point in my life, so much of art is really about an experience. So much of living is about an experience. It’s not just about products. I prefer gifting things like a stay at Château Voltaire [in Paris], which is where I actually stay, or [a meal at] Rochelle Canteen [in London], where I actually eat dinner.

When I was a kid, I used to collect sneakers. At 19, I had over a hundred pairs. But once I decided to be an artist, I stopped buying anything that I didn’t need and only bought paints and art supplies. The desire to paint and make art always trumped how much money I was willing to spend on anything else.

I try to buy clothes that I’ll wear all the time. I have friends whose work I’m a huge fan of, like Martine Rose, Matthieu Blazy [creative director of Bottega Veneta] and Raf Simons. I have a JW Anderson salmon pink sweater that is at least five years old. I wear it all the time in the studio. I like something that I can work with; essentials like a great pair of socks, a great scarf and a great T-shirt.

Holiday gifting is really for the kids. If I think of something and it happens to be April then I’ll send it to you. Why wait?

Alvaro Barrington is a London-based multimedia artist, known primarily for his paintings, although his work also encompasses installations and performances. He was the recipient of the Tate Britain’s annual Duveen Galleries commission in 2024.

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