Alaina Sullivan
New York, New York
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Drink of Choice: Coffee with almond milk
Favorite Movie: O Brother Where Art Thou
Day Job: Shop Curator / Editorial Multi-tasker at Food52.com
Favorite Color: Alizarin Crimson
Stolen Artwork of Choice: Monet 'Impression, Sunrise" and Jasper John's "America"
Current Favorite Band: Mayer Hawthorne or Beach House
Collect Anything?: Recipes
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I am drawn to the challenge of giving form to transient moments in nature. Water is a theme in my current work. With a camera I can freeze water mid-movement and with my paintbrush I can exploit the abstract designs that water creates.
My fascination with aqueous subject matter is due in part to the reality that water nearly impossible to depict without referring to something external. It is a substance lacking consistent shape or color, both reflective and transparent. My work addresses these unique physical properties of water and explores how they translate visually through reflections. On water's natural canvas patterns form for an instant before flowing into endlessly new designs. While my paintings freeze water within a specific moment, I strive to maintain the sense of water's movement in their renderings. The result is an interplay between the static and the dynamic.
I embrace the way that water distorts reflected objects to form abstract designs. I am not concerned with what is specifically being reflected in my works -- that element of ambiguity is part of my interest. Rather, it is the relationship between the reflection and the water that is important. Reflections appear to both float on water's surface and transform into water itself. This dichotomy intrigues me: are reflected images part of the water or are they separate entities? Ultimately the two are linked -- the bond between water and reflections makes each dependent on the other for visual existence. My representations of reflections as the compromise between solidity and liquidity thus become a means of exposing how these two inherently opposed states of nature can work in tandem.
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