Artist: Candice Alexander

Artists » Candice Alexander

Craft Medium: Mixed Media

Artist's Statement: printmaking

Artist Works:

Artist Biography:
I imagined an artist, the early age. I imagined him working with many people and he was old and he was young. He wears working clothes that he works with skills and prolificacy with old hands. I imagined assistants and Us laughing. I imagined a middle. Class. I imagined us making the middle of creativity and that space between, in and out, hopes and dreams. Today I imagined how I dreamt it all up and imagined it in my dreams. In my dreams I created the wants of my hands and the words leaving my fingers. For you. Each time a brush touches the surface, a new life is born. A cell shed. Shed. A creation made. A new work and opportunity living, a new volume of a dimension hanging freely for all in It's view, to view. Each time the mind makes contact....energy. Ornament. Providence. Creation. Free.

To me, art is everything and everything is art. WE are all artists. The key is to manifest our wildest dreams and allow our minds to see the Universe opening doors for the dreams we have prayed for. "As an artist, as of late, I am exploring and rediscovering ideas and images through deconstruction, rebuilding, and layering. I am currently exploring themes of interpreted shifts between dreamlike images and reality to create surrealistic imagery. Reality shifts are the source of all synchronicity and coincidence where dreams, wishes and prayers come true."

My art career began when I was 11 years old. I met a "real artist" working on a movie here in my hometown of Jennings, Louisiana. Yevette Ward painted landscapes as backdrops for the scenery of "Passion Fish". Today, she still remembers me at that age, sketchbook out at the restaurant where we met . Over 12 years, I kept in touch with Yevette Ward, the artist...she sent me drawings, old brushes, anatomy books, boxes of supplies, etc. She was a real inspiration for me as a kid and as I grew older. I wanted to be just like her - working, painting and doing what I loved to do for me and for people to view.

Today I can say that my dream has come true, and I am humbled to say that this is just the beginning. 2008 was the most successful year of my life even when the economy was at its worst. I have had the opportunity to sell my art and establish a network when artists who have been doing the show circuit for years are getting other jobs. I learned to make my art marketable and flexible so that it reflects the style of the places I travel.
I have collectors all over the world, and I now sell my art in 40 stores across Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi. I have 3 -4 full time assistants in the studio working as a team with me. They are loyal to the work we do. Without them, my business would not be nearly as successful.

To get here was something that did not happen over night. After college graduation in 2002 from McNeese State University, I found a great studio in downtown Lake Charles, LA (7 years later I sit her in that same studio and type this). Then I immediately started booking shows starting in New Mexico in 2003, Renaissance Fairs in Florida and Pennsylvania 2004-2005 and early 2006, and New York 2006. During these years, I also had the opportunity to expand my horizons by traveling abroad to Greece, Italy, Mexico, Canada, and Paris. Life was not easy, but it was certainly rich with experience. I have lived in tents for months at at time, I have sold my work on beaches in Florida, and I have lived in 1970's trailers where ants would relentlessly attack my cat's food. I have hustled my art on the streets of NYC and out of a suitcase in front of the Metropolitian Musuem of Art. I have holed up in a house in Pennsylvania during the snowy winter months where all I did was paint (Paintbrush #5 Series) Then, in early 2007, I drove home to Louisiana with a van load of art and $100 to my name.

I realized after I returned home and things were starting to happen for me here...that what I had searched for in all my travels was right here at Home. I still believe that leaving, traveling, and making a living as an artist gave me credit to the people here in my hometown and across the country. Even so, when I returned home in 2007, I had an amazing year ....making and selling work from out of my studio and doing shows across the state and several festival logos.

I enjoy making fine art with early and late technology and machines: digital graphics and printing to intaglio printmaking in combination with mixed media, drawing, photography and painting. I combine several ideas by building an attempt to trigger the imagination by creating a sense of wonder using art, math, science and kinetics as a focus. Harmony of design and proportion are important elements in my work; I find great pleasure in being aware of them and documenting the experience. We can see reality shifts as they occur and learn from witnessing this awesome phenomenon how our thoughts and feelings change the physical world. The brain is actively living in communion with the Universe, in every memory, and I am intrigued by the translation from the brain to the hand and the creation of a new piece.

~Candice Alexander November 7, 2008

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