Alexandra Flood

Statement

 

My work is decidedly spirited with confidence in gesture and form, supported by titles often suggesting the complexities of our engineered world, the natural state of things, and the unknown or in-between. I have been exploring abstraction in painting since 2019, with compositions lightly nudge at our psychological environment. As an image maker, I am hyper-aware of and affected by how we as a species are impacting our planet and heading into unfamiliar territory as a civilization. The uncertainty of the future can seem counterbalanced by humankind's talent for spinning the script, triumphant adaptation, and disappearing into daydreams, all of which fuel a vehicle of sensations in my current work. I was raised on a steady diet of American television and MTV before heading to art college, so these influences have accumulated and resulted in random threads between pop consumerism, film, and the pages of art history, as I take a cue from theatrics, mastery of technique, and audience seduction. While painting, I cannot forget about what is happening in the 24/7 hour news cycle of perception management, and trying to figure out where fake information merges in the mind with assumed reality and extreme dissociation through consumption of anything that is sparkly enough to mentally escape into. The current state of digital and device overload which has caused choppy impatience of the mind, obsession of the self, and consistent grasping for the next better thing, inspires my eclectic restlessness with technique, colour palette, and composition, as I move from bright to dark, sharp-edged to organic. My brushstrokes are generous and playful with a freedom that creates expansive movements to consider the deeply personal or the mundane.  I create space for emotions, known or lurking, together or alone, in one atmosphere. My work holds an awareness that our globalized civilization is always in a state of collision with the natural world and the effect this tension delivers to the human subconscious.