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    On Canvas and Shell, Alexis Trice Paints Ethereal Scenes Gleaming with Energy

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    “High Spirits II.” All images courtesy of Arch Enemy Arts, shared with permission

    On Canvas and Shell, Alexis Trice Paints Ethereal Scenes Gleaming with Energy

    October 22, 2024

    ArtNature

    Grace Ebert

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    For Alexis Trice, water is about moving energy and emotion. The native New Yorker (previously) paints gleaming tears that gush from an animal’s eyes or green-tinged seas with roiling waves to “release and recycle.” She adds, “I wanted to make work that could be felt without fully being seen.”

    Earthy color palettes and glinting light recur in Trice’s works, along with shaggy brown dogs that “represent the ideal conduit to bridge the gap of shared emotion between wild animals and humans.” One such creature appears in “Hay Fever,” which features the canine surrounded by thick grass with broken strands of pearls in its mouth.

    “Deep Sea, Deep Sea, Swallow Me”

    Trice frequently returns to these naturally lustrous gems to convey the passage of time, and in her latest exhibition Dust & Brine, mollusks appear as substrates in addition to subject matter. Twenty scallop shells hold ethereal scenes in miniature, whether a diptych of a bisected blue whale or three fish swirling in a lucky trinity.

    Atmospheric and ethereal, this body of work ventures further into the surreal. The artist writes about “High Spirits II,” which depicts a pair of taper candles embedded in a pink fish: “Soft flaky scales and iridescence achieved through many glazes, trial, and error. Juicy wet flesh, and flashes of candlelight peering through astigmatism eyes.”

    If you’re in Philadelphia, stop by Arch Enemy Arts to see Trice’s work through October 27. Otherwise, find more on her website and Instagram.

    “Fortune II”

    “My Heart is a Lonesome Hunter”

    “Low Tide”

    “The Old Dog”

    “A Fly”

    “Hay Fever”

    “The Sun Gets in Your Eyes”

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      #beads
      #masks
      #mixed media
      #mythology
      #shells

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      #installation
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      #climate change
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      #plants
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      #sculpture
      #sea
      #shells
      #surreal

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