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.
Recent Exhibitions
2023 CAVA Members Show, Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago
"Later Impressions," Chicago Cultural Center
"Happiness," Epiphany Center for the Arts, Chicago
"Members Best," Fulton Street Collective, Chicago
"Shapes and Spaces," Fulton Street Collective, Chicago
"Faces of Fulton," Fulton Street Collective, Chicago
Ravenswood ArtWalk, Chicago (annual participant since 2005)
"Up North Art Pop Up Shops," Lake Villa, Illinois
2022 "Inspired Stories," Dwell Studio, Chicago
"Portraiture" Gallery at Duende, Buffalo, New York
"Later Impressions," Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois
"Tiny Works," Fulton Street Collective, Chicago
"Journey/Explore," Fulton Street Collective, Chicago
Cafe Selmarie, Chicago (solo exhibition)
"Entanglements," Everybody's Coffee, Chicago (solo exhibition)
2021 "SOS Planet Earth, Stola Contemporary, Chicago
"Abstractions," Fulton Street Collective, Chicago
"Botanicals," Fulton Street Collective, Chicago
"Inscapes," Eat Paint Studio, Chicago (three artist exhibition)
2020 "The New Victory Gardens," Brushwood Center, Riverwoods, Illinois (virtual group exhibition)
Clair Smith Gallery, Barrington, Illinois (solo exhibition)
Cafe Selmarie, Chicago (solo exhibition)
2019 Dovetail Brewery, Chicago (solo exhibition)
"Women's Works," Woodstock, Illinois
2018 "City in a Garden," Everybody's Coffee, Chicago (solo exhibition)
Cook County Treasurer's Office, Chicago, (two artist exhibition)
artwork in permanent collection of Deloitte Consulting and College of Lake County, as well as many private collections.
