| |
 |
 |
|
|
| |
 |
Artist Spotlight |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
This Month We Spotlight Fellow ArtBeacon Artist Lauren Alexander.
Lauren Alexander is a painter currently residing in San Francisco, California. Lauren's work can be seen and purchased from her web site:
"Lauren Alexander".
Q: When did you first take an interest in painting and who/what inspired you to do so?
A: I come from an artistic family so I became interested in art at a very early age. Photography and writing were really my first creative outlets. It wasn't until I attended the Leo Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing in Aix-en-Provence, France that I realized how much I loved to paint and draw. I was painting with oils back then and became totally immersed in learning about technique. But, basically, I've always been self-taught.
Q: What style and artists influenced your artistic style and use of mixed media? Are there any particular pieces of artwork that were of deep influence?
A: A few of the artists who have influenced me are Cezanne, Twombly, Gorky, Kandinsky, Bourgeois, Giocometti, and Winters. I like using pencil alone or with crayon or watercolor on paper. I also use graphite with paint on canvas because drawing is important to me. Like these artists, most of my work has a linear quality. For me, a simple line is infinitesimal in its expressive capabilities and provides a direct link from the spiritual to the physical. This is the most important part of my creative process.
There are so many works by these artists and many others that have influenced me. One piece that comes to mind is Kandinsky's, First Abstract Watercolor from 1913. This small painting provides a good example of how he reinvented natural physiology by applying intuition to pictorial language.
Q: How did you find your way to the Leo Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing in Aix-en-Provence, France?
A: Well, I was on the Leonardo da Vinci an ocean liner headed from New York City to Italy. It was my first trip to Europe and I remember seeing David Bowie onboard. We spoke briefly about Leonardo's genius but that's another story. My traveling companion and I met this fascinating older, very elegant woman who told me about the Leo Marchutz School. So, after traveling to several countries I ended up staying in France and attending art school. It was a small, intimate group so each student got a lot of attention. We worked on figurative drawings of nude models there and visited places like Cezanne's studio, the place where Van Gogh cut off his ear, and the Chagall museum in Nice. We also spent afternoons doing plein air paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire and the surrounding countryside. Then we'd dance all night at clubs on the Cours Mirabeau and stop at our favorite bakery for hot pain au raisin on the way home.
Q: Have you been actively painting and drawing since your time in Aix-en-Provence? If not, did you find that you missed having a creative outlet?
A: When I returned to San Francisco from France I got caught up in a faster lifestyle and grew impatient with waiting for oil paint to dry to express myself. At that time, I wasn't aware that it was possible to get a rich, textured look by using acrylic with various mediums. So, I learned how to use a darkroom and did a lot of black and white printing. I used to spend hours wandering around our city taking pictures of all kinds of people and architecture, some of which now is history.
Q: Do you enter the creative process with a series in mind or is the creation of an art series an after thought to spontaneous creativity?
A: For me, the realization of a series usually follows an intensive creative process. A good example is the Pine Street Garden Series. I completed these drawings this summer as a result of spending time in my garden. My mother passed away a year ago and my garden has been a sanctuary in the midst of chaos. On one side there has been unending construction noise and on the other frat boys talking on cell phones and throwing beer cans into our yard. Ironically, I was in the middle of it all trying to cultivate beauty by nurturing a garden. So, the drawings came out of this dichotomous situation and the name for the series occurred to me later.
Q: Which of your current series do you feel is the most compelling to viewers? Why?
A: A lot of people liked the Heritage Series because they found the paintings to be beautiful. What this series taught me is that I love to draw as much, if not more, than paint. However, I felt that the linear quality of my drawing was getting constricted in the texture of paint. While at the San Francisco Art Institute, I did a paper on Cy Twombly and was inspired by his anticompositional approach. What I learned researching Twombly freed my line to more readily express subjective memory. This is more important to me than conveying beauty in a traditional sense.
Q: Have you had this series on display yet and if so have you received any interesting comments on particular pieces? What comments have stayed with you?
A: Yes, the Heritage Series was exhibited at City Art Gallery and the Whitney Cultural Center in San Francisco. I remember one viewer commenting that the paintings would look good in her freshly painted kitchen.
Q: Which of your current paintings/drawings were the most challenging to create and why?
A: I'm in the process of completing a series called Strange Things Happen in Times of War. The paintings in this series are more colorful and whimsical in tone than those I did immediately after 9/ll. I've come to realize that life can be fun and terrifying all at once. I think there is a fragmented quality to these paintings that resemble graffiti or wall inscriptions. I've always been fascinated by urban markings whether on walls, sidewalks, or other surfaces.
Q: Do you find these are the pieces that generate the greatest reaction by your viewers or do few recognize the difficulty of your work?
A: I haven't exhibited this series yet but viewers can see my work during Open Studios at 2338 Pine Street from October 16th - 17th.
Q: Which pieces of your work do you find/have you found yourself attached to the most? What is is about this/these piece(s) that make them so difficult to let go of?
A: Work that I can still learn from is difficult to let go of. Also, work that is the most raw and truthful is incredibly hard to part with.
Q: What types of things are you not doing that you would like to be doing in relation to your artwork?
A: From a business perspective, I should send more slides out on a regular basis. Creatively, I would like to take sculpture classes. I'm especially interested in learning about metal sculpture. And, I want to do more drawing on paper, a medium I greatly respect.
Q: What do you find is compelling you to pursue these things or not pursue them if that may be the case?
A: My parents both worked in the medium of sculpture. My mother made amazing faces of different imagined characters out of clay and my dad chiseled faces out of huge blocks of granite. For awhile now I've been collecting pieces of metal wire that I find walking around the city. I call it spirit wire because the shapes are incredible and seem to have been designed by some imaginary force. So, I've started creating a few assemblages from these finds.
Q: As an off the wall ending to our interview...If you were given the power to rename the state you live in what would you rename it and why?
A: Celliphonia because like everywhere else cell phone use has become an epidemic. People need to slow down and really look at the world around them. But, I guess that's where visual artists come in...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Did You Know? - All ArtBeacon Artist Sites Are Listed Under "Resources"
In the navigation a top every ArtBeacon page is a link titled "Resources". Clicking on this link will bring you to a page with several resource types including "Artist Web Sites".
You can display "Artist Web Sites" results by Name or Location.
NOTE: Individual artist site results are displayed automatically once a site/store is published. Content for these automatic site/store references are pulled from "About The Store", "Store Name" (from your "Site/Store Settings" page) and "City"/"State" (from your "Account Information").
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Forums & Community
We remind you that you can discuss account setup, business practices, recent site developments, and suggestions, with fellow members and the ArtBeacon Development Team in the ArtBeacon Forum. >> Access The Forum |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
