Current Larson Exhibit

When Alessandra was growing up, her family had a large collection of photo albums. She loved paging through those images of her parents as children, and her grandparents when they were young, great-grandparents and other relatives that were gone before she was born. She got to know them through the stories she was told. Later on, she was naturally drawn to vintage photographs of strangers found at antique stores. As she developed as an artist, she continued to return to those photographs as her source of inspiration, and developed a way to rescue them from obscurity.

 

Alessandra's approach to developing a piece starts with an image that sparks her curiosity - who are those people, what is their story, what is happening in their lives at this moment? 

 

She was delighted to discover that there was a thing called “mixed-media,” and embraced the freedom to create with whatever materials she wanted, or simply had on hand. Her materials are often the photographs themselves, as well as other discarded ephemera that are collaged and painted upon. 

 

Her fabric collages incorporate batik cottons for their painterly quality, and as a drawing surface for colored pencils. This combination of materials allows her to achieve a soft and dreamlike effect, blurring the lines between reality and memory.

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For her most recent work, she is exploring the malleability of slow-drying acrylics, pushing their boundaries to emulate the richness of oils. This experimentation allows her to layer, blend, and build depth in satisfying ways that bring life to the figures she creates.

 

Her inspiration for this work comes from a summer visit to the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, where viewing the work of Pierre Bonnard, Henri Edmund Cross, Georges Seurat and others fueled her irresistible desire to paint.

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Alessandra is a resident of Plymouth, where she has a studio in the Plymouth Artist Collective. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, with a concentration in graphic design. "Through my work, I hope to evoke a sense of connection and introspection, inviting others to pause and reflect on the delicate balance between past and present, memory and imagination," says Alessandra about her work.