A R T I S T S T A T E M E N T My paintings emerge from a place where contradictions are allowed, paradox reigns and reason is abandoned. My search is for the inherent radiance in all things… the extraordinary in the ordinary. As the process of painting parallels the movement of psyche, it helps me to understand the world as a deeper reality. The rich soul experiences of my life become tangible. Each painting is a small acknowledgment of the inner life that can perhaps reveal its own share of soul, and that share of soul may connect to someone else’s share of soul. Then perhaps beauty may be granted. B I O G R A P H Y Alexandra Eldridge explores the great themes of life: consciousness and unconsciousness; fear and love; memory and dreams. Well-known for working with unconventional materials such as vintage photographs, venetian plaster, antique scrolls and other fragments and ephemera. Her paintings resolve as journeys of exploration into the innate connection between animal and human. The gaze of our ancestors is merged with the dignified and mindful gaze of majestic animals, releasing a theatre of seduction and infinite fantasy. Though further still, there resides an unsettling duality reminding us of the transience and fragility of our own life and dreams. ​In a process of mapping and layered meaning, Eldridge makes reference to myriad literary and philosophical sources, including Jungian psycho analytics, the poetry of William Blake, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Elliot, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Eldridge uses these literary influences as a starting point to consider the primacy of emotion and the power of the imagination in establishing a heightened state of being. Eldridge studied at Ohio University, Cambridge University and Santa Reparata Graphic Workshop in Florence. In the early 1970s Eldridge co-founded Golgonooza, an artist's community in Athens, Ohio, based upon the philosophies of the visionary British artist and poet, William Blake (1757-1827). Blake’s influence is evident throughout Eldridge’s work, particularly in her vocabulary of mysterious visual metaphors: a constellation of personal symbols often drawn from dreams, which includes feet, dresses, ladders, houses, swings, hourglasses, eggs, birds, rabbits and deer. Oscillating between the seen and the unseen, the personal and the universal, Eldridge’s poetic and tender images celebrate contradiction, paradox and the abandonment of reason. Alexandra Eldridge has had over 40 solo exhibitions across the USA and in Paris, and has been included in numerous group shows internationally, including London, Paris, New York, Belgrade, Ljubljana, California, Santa Fe and a major mural commission for the Place de Vosges, Paris. She has participated in residencies on the Island of Elba, Italy, and the Valparaiso Foundation in Almeria, Spain. Her work is included in the private collections of William Hurt, Steve Buscemi and Edie Falco. Eldridge currently lives and works in New Mexico.