Alexandra
Bailliere

The Painting Process

Alexandra's paintings begin with looking. She paints what most people pass by: a verge of wild buttercups beside a highway, a meadow in Golden Gate Park at eight in the morning, the rocks at the south end of Rodeo Beach. Many of her small works are made outdoors on linen panels, quick and direct, catching the light and weather of a single moment on the Marin coast. In the studio those observations grow into large canvases, often four or five feet across, in oil on primed canvas. Here the work moves between observation and abstraction. She builds the surface in layers, letting earlier colour show through, and uses expressive, gestural brushwork so the painting keeps the energy of the first look while turning into something more than a view. Rich, saturated colour carries the mood, whether it is the heat of Spring Fever or the quiet of Summer's Twilight Reverie. Her training runs deep. She drew from life as a child at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and later studied art and design at UC Berkeley and painting at Mills College, where she earned her MFA. As a teacher at Contra Costa College she still spends her days thinking about drawing and painting. What ties it all together is attention: to the overlooked, the incongruous and the places where unexpected beauty appears, and to letting the paint itself hold that feeling.