Two years ago, Alexandra Eldridge’s exhibition opened at Nüart Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico! Titled A Kinship with All Things, the exhibit included paintings by Alexandra as well as artist Santiago Pérez.
Alexandra’s artwork is highly mythological, featuring paintings of animals and people (and often hybrids of animals and people) in dreamlike landscapes, and focusing on imagination and wonder rather than realism. Her process often involves taking old portrait photographs dating back to the 19th century and mixing them with drawings of animals, thereby adding a magical element to intersect the past and present.
She has had over forty exhibits including A Kinship with All Things since the beginning of her career, and her work has been featured on book covers and in celebrity collections. Alexandra’s influences include poets, filmmakers and philosophers. In an interview with Roza Melkumyan for FF2, she explained another place where ideas for paintings come from, “A prolific dreamer, Alexandra also draws inspiration from her dreams and has been keeping dream journals since she was a young adult. ‘A lot of paintings come from dreamwork.’ She describes a particularly affecting dream she recently had, in which a bird sat perched atop a chair, an egg balanced precariously next to it. ‘I was struck by the trust this bird had that, even in this moment of uncertainty, its baby would not roll off the chair.’ Such visceral feelings, combined with striking visuals, compel her to continue painting.”
Alexandra was born to a family of artists in New Jersey, though she now lives in New Mexico. She moved there from Ohio when a psychic told her that she belonged in the Southwest. “For Alexandra, art has always been the easiest language with which to communicate the thoughts and feelings that live deep within her psyche.” Roza writes, “When I ask how [Alexandra] is able to access such places so easily, she says she’s been cultivating it all her life. ‘I was very lucky to have a mother and father who were both artists.’ Encouraged from an early age to exercise her creativity in artistic outlets, Alexandra would later marry her art professor (‘a fabulous eccentric’) and start a community based on the philosophies of painter and poet William Blake on the 70-acre farm where the pair lived and raised animals… ‘We were constantly reading, constantly feeding the imagination. I was always cultivating this imaginative world.’” Alexandra said, “‘I’ve been lucky to have those experiences, which grounded me and gave me a rich life.’”
Learn more about Alexandra Eldridge by reading Roza’s full article on the artist here. You can celebrate the anniversary of her A Kinship with All Things by checking out this video from the Nüart Gallery about the exhibition.
© Anna Nappi (3/6/22) Special for FF2 Media.
CREDITS & PERMISSIONS
Featured photo: “Photo of Alexandra above was provided by her and is used here with her permission. All rights reside with her.”
