Organized for the Inasmuch Foundation Gallery at Oklahoma City Community College, Welcome to the Traffic Jam featured recent abstract and figurative paintings by Oklahoma City-based artist Alexis Austin. Alexis explores material, color, and texture in her mixed media paintings, using nontraditional mediums and techniques such as bleach, gauze, resin, and pushing layers of paint through the backs of canvases to create highly individualistic images of people, places, experiences, and abstractions. This exhibition includes a sampling of the different kinds of work that Alexis has returned to throughout her evolving practice.
Artist Statement: I paint. Producing what I do gives me a feeling and if I have a goal at all, it is maybe to invoke feelings and thought in others. My paintings can be quite dark and a little sardonic. I think it is important to acknowledge the scared parts of us, or the secret feelings we don’t share with others.
Artist Biography: Alexis Austin is from Oklahoma City. She studied studio art at Oklahoma City University and fashion design at Columbia College in Chicago.
She implements different techniques to achieve textures that people want to touch and uses bold colors to catch the eye. Textiles play an important role as part of her medium. The specific type of fabric frequently determines both the techniques employed and often the content.
For a fantastic review of this show by art writer John Selvidge, please click here or here to access his Art Review Oklahoma article.
See the exhibition on the Inasmuch Foundation Gallery’s website here.
