Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexandra Wiesenfeld.
Hi Alexandra, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up in Germany with a German mother and a Jewish American father. Though our house was a household of painters-my father Paul, whom I had to model for as a kid, and my brother Daniel – I didn’t make art until I moved to LA on my own after graduating from high school. I had no plan, no idea what to do besides leaving. One thing led to another, and I never moved back. I went to school (BFA at Pomona, MFA in Montana, where I stayed for a few more years) and then taught painting for two years at the University of Iowa, after which I moved back to LA. I have two phenomenal kids and teach painting and drawing full-time at Los Angeles City College, a school I love. I was represented first by Happy Lion Gallery and then for ten years by Klowden Mann Gallery. Since the gallery’s closure during Covid, I have been part of the artist collective Durden & Rey.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road had often been a struggle on all levels. But it taught me patience and persistence. Nothing came easy or natural at first since I didn’t have a blueprint for how to navigate LA, didn’t drive or have a place, didn’t know how to approach going to school, etc. There was a very real financial struggle until I landed a full-time job. And then, I struggled to balance the everyday demands of being a mom full time, working full time, with making art. Sleep was a luxury.
But even if I take all that out, there is always an internal struggle to wrestle with: how often did I tell myself that there are too many painters and great paintings in this world already? Why create more stuff that this planet does not need? Why not simply support others like my beloved students make good paintings? Why spend so much money and time on this endeavor that seems so self-indulgent at times? But apparently, I have to move paint around to feel my life, to connect spirit and body, to give me a sense of being grounded in the here and now. No other medium will do. The years have allowed me to focus inward spiral formation, seemingly circling but yet slowly drilling down to arrive finally at what feels like my own visual language and process.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In my work, I explore ideas of the sublime, alienation, and terror in a world on the cusp of, or way past extinction. Material, surface, and scale influence the process, and I usually work on several series at once. I invent imagined spaces within the painting, using no reference material. Crude marks, shapes, and simple forms are to suggest invented beings and states of ritualistic, mythological, and fantastical spaces and beings. I try to capture what I imagine are energetic forces moving behind the veil of our gravity-bound world.
What has set me apart for better or worse, is that I don’t follow trends. So sometimes my work fits the moment and sometimes not, but that’s out of my control and also not so interesting to think about. When I was much younger, I used to think of success as money and shows. Now the artists that I find successful are the ones who keep working, even when no one pays attention or the market demands too much of them. The ones whose every work arises from a true investigation, a necessity to make work in order to explore something specific rather than variations on a theme to feed a market
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
Show me a contained space and a pile of stuff and I can -at a glance- tell you whether and how it will all fit. I would have been a good mover. I have a talent for remembering what people wore when I first met them, but instantly forget anything else that no longer serves me, which may just be the result of a bad memory, but definitely helps in not holding grudges. And I love observing ants. I have learned a lot about them, and feel I can communicate with them- about basic stuff, like how to make them leave the house. Of course, I needed Edward O. Wilson to fill in the deeper knowledge.
Contact Info:
- Website: alexandrawiesenfeld.com
- Instagram: alexandrawiesenfeld
Image Credits
The image of me : photo credit “Pauline Bissell”
