Early Life, Family and Training Alexander Struys was born into a household where the manipulation of light and glass was a practiced trade. His father, a man originally from Holland, worked as a master glass painter. This early exposure to the craft of color and transparency likely shaped the visual language that would later define his own work. The boy's hand was steady from a very young age; by the age of six, he was already a student at the Academy of Dordrecht. As he grew, his training moved toward the formal structures of fine art. He eventually found his way to the Royal Academy of Fi…