statement

I paint still-lifes depicted as iconographic portraiture. The subjects are mostly representations of living things, although not always in their assumed natural state. I am interested in expressing the personality, spirit and unspoken mystery of seemingly common things that are slightly out of their normal context. This work focuses on the qualities of poignancy, depth and stillness. They are pictorial narratives, unspoken scenes; simple allegories starring anthropomorphic characters who speak silently to me. I translate their voices into paint.

This body of work began as studies in representational drawing that have evolved into their own unique form of contemporary realism with a surrealist edge. For me, art is thought made visual. The sensual act of painting is one of balancing truly being able to see with giving form to that which is unseen. My easel is my cello, the paintbrush is my bow. The brushtrokes are the melody, while the nuances of color are made of individual musical notes. I paint to sing. I paint just to breathe.

bio

Alexandria Levin has exhibited her oil paintings in galleries, museums and cultural centers across the country since 1981, including ten solo shows. Her paintings are in private collections from Boston to Japan, as well as in the state of New Mexico’s Capitol Art Collection in Santa Fe. She has lectured on her art in the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia and Tokyo, and was awarded major state grants from the California Arts Council and Massachusetts Arts Lottery Council, plus she has received various exhibition and purchase awards. Ms. Levin attended Massachusetts College of Art to study painting for two years and later returned to school at the San Francisco Art Institute where she received a BFA with honors in 1989.

As a child growing up in New York City, all Alexandria ever wanted was a steady flow of art supplies. She began painting over thirty years ago, and has created four strong, distinct bodies of work since. Her earliest work was influenced by Rousseau, Gauguin, O’Keeffe and the early punk rock scene in Boston. These paintings were darkly colorful, playfully nightmarish, melancholy and full of symbolism. After moving to California in 1985 her art became visually influenced by the coastal architecture, exotic plant life and a quality of light that doesn’t exist in the east, as well as impressions from her travels to Mexico, Guatemala, Japan, Hawaii and New Mexico.

Painting has always been a means of story-telling about her life, illustrating her dreams and portraying observations of the world around her. Her natural inclination to allegorical, narrative work has continued to deepen over time. Twenty years of figurative work gave way to birds, fish and other animals for awhile, and then to anthropomorphic still-lifes; a long series that she is still exploring. Strong drafting ability combined with a vibrant sense of color and composition, and her innate surrealist sensibility from earlier periods, make her paintings a unique and integral part of the current resurgence in representational art and magical realism.

Alexandria is currently living and painting in the Philadelphia area, and has recently written two books on the arts and creativity. She is also working on two collections of poetry and song lyrics. As always, and as the top priority in her life, she is painting whenever possible; continuing to build her two current bodies of work with well over a hundred and seventy paintings to date and going strong.