Alexandra Stevenson
Educator and artist, Chicago, IL.
My paintings are inspired by ordinary views. Some begin with the compacted architectural forms of urban life; others come from the natural world that pushes up through concrete or gets preserved by city dwellers who need an oasis. Whether I'm standing on a train platform or riding my bike through a city forest preserve, something catches my eye and stays with me. Usually it's a formal relationship between shapes and lines, colors and textures -- what I glimpse in a moment becomes what I see in my mind's eye and then shifts again in the studio, as soon as I put paint on a canvas. Because paintings have a life and language of their own, painting is a negotiation. The paint and I go back and forth, with all the push and pull of any negotiation, until a composition feels confident and speaks to my initial inspiration or offers an entirely new vision.
Education
1981-1985 -- Art and English (honors) University of Iowa
1985-1987 -- MAT University of Iowa
Recent Exhibitions
2021 "SOS Planet Earth, Stola Contemporary, Chicago (group exhibition)
2021 "Abstractions," Fulton Street Collective, Chicago (group exhibition)
2021 "Botanicals," Fulton Street Collective, Chicago (group exhibition)
2021 "Inscapes," Eat Paint Studio, Chicago (three artist exhibition)
2020 "The New Victory Gardens," Brushwood Center, Riverwoods, IL (virtual group exhibition)
2020 Clair Smith Gallery, Barrington IL (solo exhibition)
2020 Cafe Selmarie, Chicago (solo exhibition)
2019 Dovetail Brewery, Chicago (solo exhibition)
2019 "Women's Works," Woodstock, IL (group exhibition)
2019 Ravenswood Art Walk, Chicago (open studio annually since 2005)
2018 "City in a Garden," Everybody's Coffee, Chicago (solo exhibition)
2018 Cook County Treasurer's Office, Chicago, IL (two artist exhibition)
artwork in permanent collection of Deloitte Consulting and College of Lake County, as well as many private collections.
