Alexandra Grant Reveals Sweet Details About Keanu Reeves

Alexandra Grant is revealing more about her relationship with boyfriend Keanu Reeves!

The accomplished visual artist, who is 50 years old, attended the Los Angeles Beverly Arts Icon Awards on Friday without Reeves, who is 59 years old. When asked whether it is more challenging or simpler to navigate red carpets by herself, she provided a reflective response.

“The good news about falling in love as an adult is that I had built my own career by the time that my relationship had begun,” she shared with PEOPLE. “I feel very confident in the relationship on the red carpet. I feel confident on it alone.”

“It’s interdependent and independent in the best ways,” she adds.

While Grant, who was being honored at the event, walked the red carpet alone at The Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, she has been captured in photographs attending various occasions with Reeves ever since they made their public debut as a couple in 2019.

When questioned about how she and the John Wick star, who initially began as friends and collaborators, navigate each other’s professional worlds, Grant initiated her response by reminiscing about a time when she felt creatively challenged.

“In a moment of frustration in my life, I once said, ‘Sometimes I feel like a Maserati stuck in traffic,’ that I have this big engine, but, for a variety of reasons, that I couldn’t ever go,” she shared with PEOPLE. “And I know a lot of people feel frustrated in their lives, that they’re not able to run their engine.”

She adds, “I think every creative person feels that way.”

“What I love about Keanu and our exchange is that we’re pushing each other to build new roads,” she explains. “Seeing the other person’s problem-solving is inspiring, like, ‘Oh, well, okay, this one, that’s a cul-de-sac. How do I try this other thing?’ ”“He’s such an inspiration to me,” she goes on. “He’s so creative, he’s so kind. He works so hard.”

Grant also points out that both she and her actor boyfriend are fundamentally storytellers at heart.

“My work is much more of a private performance, but I have a text that I interpret in the studio into a painting, into an object,” she explains. “He takes the text in private and then turns it into a performance in public. There’s a relationship. We’re both at the heart readers and researchers. We both care about people and we care about characters.”

Grant went on to draw a comparison between her and Reeves’ creative realms using a metaphor.

“I think there’s a lot of similarities,” she started. “Sometimes I feel like, to make a film, as we’re seeing now in the strike, that it’s a cruise ship. Everyone is dependent on everyone else. You can’t go off and— being an artist, maybe at the beginning of my career, I was in a kayak on the sea of creativity. Now maybe it’s a small speedboat, but it’s still a lot more nimble.”

“I think that is very inspiring for him,” she commented regarding Reeves and the comparison to the “cruise ship” environment of filmmaking.

She goes on to say, “To make a film, you require hundreds of people. To be an artist, you don’t. You require one. You require a community to get the work into the world, but not to actually make it. I think part of the inspiration is the differences of scale.”

Grant says her art has “absolutely” evolved since she started a relationship with Reeves.

“I had a studio visit a few years ago, and this very kind, very high-level person said, ‘I can see that your work has gotten happier,’ ” she recollects. “That’s real. We’re all human beings. We’re animals. We’re expressing from where we are and certainly feeling happier. I think the work is happier.”

Both Grant and Reeves devoted their Friday evenings to their respective artistic pursuits. Grant explained that The Matrix star had to skip the awards ceremony because he had a performance with his band Dogstar.

“I’m really proud,” she expressed. “I am a huge Dogstar fan. I had the great pleasure of going to their first public show and because I’ve been listening to the latest album for quite some time, I was one of the only people in the audience who knew all the lyrics. That was really cool. It’s fun. It’s beyond fun.”

She adds, “I was dancing to all the lyrics and then I looked around and I was like, ‘Nobody has heard the album except for me and a few people.’ It’s been a real pleasure to see the guys come back together, to be so creative and supportive of one another.”

Grant says she is “so proud” and “happy” for Reeves’ alternative rock band, which made a long-awaited reunion this year after two decades.

“I’m glad they’re able to do it,” she says, adding that she thinks it’s “really great that Keanu has the ability to pivot to being a musician” during the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

“They had been playing music and rehearsing and they had already recorded most of the album before the strike,” she mentions. “What it opened up was more time to go on the road.”