Info
About
Alexandra E. Thomas was born in Christiana Delaware in 1990. Journeying often from “The First State,” she traveled with family all through her younger years to numerous cities and parks around the U.S. and other countries including the U.K., France, and Mexico. During each trip, drawing became her favorite pastime. Touring cities and exploring woodlands in her early years garnered a reverence for history, and nature. As a young adult, she moved to Philadelphia, PA and earned multiple scholarships and a BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Now, she continues to paint and shows her new artworks in various juried group exhibitions regionally, and is also affiliated with the Philadelphia Sketch Club, the Plastic Club, and The Philadelphia Plein Air Painters, among other local groups. She works in Philadelphia, but her home is Delaware.
Artist's Statement
"I paint pictures and make collages and assemblages that signify my impressions about subtle queues of American Culture. I want my artworks mini-narratives to reinforce peoples understanding, as well as reinforce my own, that each person’s time and experiences are individual, but human beings relate through emotional impersonations. My work consists of 2-D and 3-D images of still lives, interiors, figures, and landscapes that involve instances and problems that build and sometimes resolve themselves as I paint them. I juxtapose subjects with imagery and objects of symbolism that hint at their personality. When I am done, the artwork becomes a situation that the viewer can enter and inhabit visually in order to interpret the circumstances of the subject on their own. Through each unique moment and technique I execute, I the hope that when viewers see the finished products, that their experience also relates to my feelings while in making the work.
My motivation and influences come from admiring contemporary artists, but not comparing myself to them, just as I would admire a picture from a magazine and emulate a look, I never simply copy what I see. I went to art school and have technical/stylistic/academic influences from there, but I constantly refer back to my family, my home, places I have travelled, stories from colleagues from work, and my own experiences in the art world. I think there is a lot of energy to absorb and learn from all of the medias in ones surroundings, so there are also many messages to examine and feel emotionally; therefore it is beneficial to make artwork that focuses on ones impressions of such."