Well Howedy!

I’m Alicia!

I’m primarily a painter, but my education has led me to so many amazing opportunities to learn other crafts that often times interact with my paintings. During the school year, I  teach at a preschool as an art teacher and a homeschool co-op for middle and high schoolers. When learn about new processes, I often times ask myself “How can I adapt this for my students?”

Playing with color, experimental practices, and visual drama are elements that have been consistent in my work from the time I started my creative practice. These pillars have evolved with me over the years, I credit this to being drawn to the pursuit of learning. Curiosity and failure are important to my creative process. Taking away the idea of perfection and replacing it with the interest that comes from my work being created by an imperfect human hand. The main medium of choice is oil paint, and working large feels like second nature. My motivations in my work are expressing how I perceive the human experience.​

Artist Bio

My creative practice is deeply intertwined with my navigation and prescription of life events around me. So it’s important to me to talk about them in tandem! 

My lifelong love of art began with my mother (who is a creative genius in her own right) leaving me alone with a box of cheap acrylic paint on many summer afternoons. While I miraculously got ultramarine blue paint 10 feet up the wall, mixed chalk with water to make a new medium, and just generally live life covered in whatever art-related thing I could reach, I actually began to build a creative practice.  Playing with color, experimental practices, and visual drama are elements that have been consistent in my work because of this early exposure. While the subject matter has evolved and my techniques have changed, I have retained my curiosity and enthusiasm for art. Now, I'm so grateful to teach these ideas to an incredible mix of students from ages 18 months to 18 years old. I also have retained my own practice and am currently focused on a body of work that reflects on my experience in 2022. During a routine eye exam at the end of 2021, I was given a diagnosis that would affect my eyesight long-term. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I would undergo 5 brain surgeries to resolve this issue. Though as an artist, this was a difficult pill to swallow, I am of the mindset that great things can come out of great challenges. While my eyesight was affected, I managed to form an obsession with color, how it is perceived by the human eye, and furthermore, a very imperfect human eye. 

Intravenous is the collection that came out of this struggle. In the year 2023, I am looking forward to not only seeing how my collection will develop but also continuing to offer a gentle and experimental space for students to explore their own creativity. 

Past shows​

ART EN BLANC, the gallery 8680 2016

RED, the gallery 8680 2017

Crème de la crème, through the gallery 8680 2019

Hot and sweaty, thought the gallery 500x, 2019

Crème de la crème, through the gallery 8680 2021

A piece created in collaboration with Emmy Bright “it’s gets better or it doesn’t” through

“Intravenous 2023” Installed in the Lightwell Gallery at the University of North Texas 2023​

Awards

​Allstate safe driving national design Honorable Mention 2015

The Leukemia Lymphoma Society 2015 national t-shirt competition winner

The Leukemia Lymphoma Society 2019 national t-shirt competition winner 

The current body of work ​

The current ongoing focus of my work is color and the subtle difference in hues. Using programs such as Touch Designer, and Photoshop. Creating randomized, vibrant compositions that I then pull images of and translate to Canvas. My interest is particularly in how I perceive the images as I transfer them. Starting in late 2021, I began having vision issues which would later result in significant damage to my eyesight. My vision was different from what it was barely 2 years earlier, and I found a shift in my practice that resonated with me. This has become this current body of work. Intravenous, whose title is a nod to the venous sinus, is a major vein on both the left and right side of the brain slightly above the ear, came about when I received an intravenous implant on the left side of my brain.

My hope with this collection is to highlight the unusual beauty of losing eyesight.