The Strawberry Tiger

This painting was inspired by a color variation in tiger's that gives their coat a faded red color.  I imagine the mother deer in this painting is telling a story to her baby about the Strawberry Tiger.

ALEXIS KANDRA, The Strawberry Tiger, oil and metal foil on wood panel, 16" X 20", 2017  SOLD

The Mountain

This painting was made for a group show, currently up at 287 Bleecker Street, Manhattan NY.  The show is up through May 30th, 2017.  Check it out if you are in NYC!

With this painting, I wanted to have the circle become more of a sphere.  I used the angle of the grid and animals to describe the depth and curve of the sphere.

I imagine the animals piled on top of each other are forming their own mountain, their own foundation of an ecosystem.  Without all the parts of the ecosystem, the structure would fall apart.

ALEXIS KANDRA

The Mountain

oil and metal foil on wood panel

36" X 36"

2017

SOLD

The Canopy

ALEXIS KANDRA, The Canopy, oil and metal foil on wood panel, 36" X 48", 2016

This painting features a family of macaws.  A scarlet macaw, a blue and gold macaw, and their hybrid offspring.  The snake is an emerald tree boa, strangely uninterested in the parrots.

As with other recent paintings, I have inverted the colors outside of the circular portal.  I imagine that when the creatures are in that inverted space, everything looks normal to them. 

To test that the inversion is working, I will periodically photograph the painting in progress and invert the image to check on it.  Here is an inverted image of the final painting.

Living Fossils

ALEXIS KANDRA, Living Fossils, oil and metal foil on wood panel, 36" X 48", 2016

This painting is inspired by ideas of life and extinction. It features a coelacanth fish, the classic idea of a creature once thought to be extinct millions of years ago, only be found alive and unchanged in the present. It also includes a Chinese white dolphin, a creature soon to be extinct as habitat destruction lowers its population. Both are living fossils in this painting.

The Dragoness and Her Mate

This is one of my most recent paintings. 

This painting is inspired by the Chinese symbols of the dragon and the phoenix. Together, these two celestial animals represent balance and harmony. As a couple, the male dragon and the female phoenix are an ideal balance of yang and yin. They are an auspicious pair, bringing prosperity, order, and good fortune.

For this painting, I imagined my own version of the dragon and the phoenix. I used the komodo dragon and the peacock, two very different animals but with some similarities in biology. I like to imagine what might hatch from their clutch of eggs.

ALEXIS KANDRA , The Dragoness and Her Mate , oil and metal foil on wood panel , 48" X 48" , 2016

http://kandra-art.com/Dragoness.htm

Cat Series

I have been working on smaller paintings on panel, and the domesticated cat has been a popular topic.  I have made two paintings featuring domesticated cats so far.  Commissions are available!  Contact kandra.art@live.com for more information.

Alexis Kandra

The Odd-Eyed Cat and the Balinese Starling

oil and metal foil on wood panel

18" X 24"

2015

Sold to a private collection

Alexis Kandra

The Instinctual Hunter

acrylic and metal foil on wood panel

18" X 24"

2015

Sold to a private collection

New Paintings in a show in Brooklyn

I have been working on new paintings.  All of 2015 has been a blur of making new work.  This is one of my latest pieces.  I just completed it today for a show that is opening this Friday, November 6th!  The opening is from 7-10 pm at Koda in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  The show will be up for a month afterward, so if you are in NYC, come check it out :)

ALEXIS KANDRA, From Above, oil and metal foil on masonite panel, 24" X 36" , 2015

More work to come, stay tuned....

The Last Brucennial 2014

I have a painting in The Last Brucennial, a "come-one-come-all" style show of over 600 woman artists.

The Brucennial opening was March 6, 2014.  These are some photos I took of my piece at the opening.

The painting I have in the show is one that I completed this past summer.  It is called Kind Of.  More information can be found on my website here: http://kandra-art.com/LionGoat.htm

The painting is a sculptural painting.  The stretcher is constructed with a right angle that allows it to sit on the floor as a free standing sculpture.  The canvas curves around the stretcher, creating a curved distorted surface.

The Last Brucennial will be up through April 4th, 2013, at 837 Washington St. in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan, NYC.

Alexis Kandra

Kind Of

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

4' X 5' X 1.5'

2013

 

 

 

 

Diamond Green Apartment Building - Home of Portrait

My largest painting entitled Portrait, is currently living in the lobby of the Diamond Green Apartment Building at 1000 Diamond Street Philadelphia.  It is on exhibition there, and can be viewed in the lobby or from the street looking in the large glass windows.  

We hung the painting high on the wall so it would overlook the space and be out of any possible danger.  The painting's red and pink tones nicely compliment the green wall, and it fits well in the space.

Many people have complimented the painting in the lobby.  The apartment building is newly constructed, and the painting warms the lobby space and make it more active and inviting.  I'm glad my painting can have a temporary home there.

Cornell Box

For my English Class about Collecting, we had an assignment to make a Cornell Box.  Joseph Cornell was an artist most known for his assemblages of collaged images and objects.  He organized the assemblages in boxes, creating surreal spaces through the collection and placement of imagery.

Our assignment was to create our own Cornell Box using images or objects we collected.  In the class, we had been discussing how objects gain meaning through being in a collection, how  objects are added or removed from a collection, and how the objects create context and change the meaning of the other items in the collection.  We learned about motivations to collect, methods of display, and the variety of collectors and collections.  It would be impossible to summarize everything we learned here, but the Cornell Box assignment was meant to exercise what we discussed by applying it to a collection of our own.

I had been collecting and carrying around some objects from various different places.  I happened to have brought some of them to school with me, intending to create some sort of artwork with them to solidify memories of my hometown.  I used those, and new items I had collected to create this box.  I wanted the box to have themes of outer space, life cycles, growth and development, and the fuzzy line between the natural and the created.

These are the items I chose, in order as if reading the box from right to left:

Upper Section of Box

4 shells from the Monongahela River
1 deer leg bone from Frick Park
1 piece of wood with a large knot that separated
2 Mourning Dove wing feathers, collected when I was in grade-school
1 metal ring from near a train track
1 piece of once molten steel refuse from a slag dump
1 small Sassafras Tree branch with empty Sassafras Swallowtail chrysalis
1 Cicada skin
3 Water Caltrop seeds
1 Railroad spike

Middle section of Box

12 plastic HO scale sheep
1 blue and white marble, dug up in my backyard in grade-school
1 piece of slag suspended with wire

Lower Section of Box 

2 pieces of Turtle shell found at Storm King Sculpture Garden
2 ceramic shards found along the Monongahela River
2 pieces of blue glass found along the Monongahela River
  

My Cornell Box is currently living in the Honors Lounge at Temple University.



Examples of boxes made by Joseph Cornell.  Images from http://www.artchive.com

Joseph Cornell
Untitled (Cockatoo and Corks)
c. 1948
Construction
14 3/8 x 13 1/2 x 5 5/8 in.
Private collection

Joseph Cornell
Untitled (Medici Boy)
1942-1952
Construction
13 15/16 x 11 3/16 x 3 7/8 in.
Estate of Joseph Cornell

New Website

I updated my website, and changed the layout.  It's now easier to navigate and more streamlined.  I'm adding more content to it.

It took a lot of work to get it to this point.  I couldn't have done it without the help of my dad, who is teaching me how to make a website.  Sometimes its a lot of trial and error, but it's rewarding to understand the coding and how to problem solve even if it takes a while to figure out.

I hope you enjoy it:  www.kandra-art.com

Senior BFA Show

It has been a long time since I have posted.  In that time, I have gone to Rome, returned, worked, and just recently had my Senior BFA show.

I showed three paintings.  The first was a painting about 10' X 8' called "Portrait".  I spent the most time on it, building it up over the course of a month.  The small painting is 6' X 4.5' and was painted from a combination of collages and still lives.  The last was painted in a few days, and is a monochromatic paintings in blue colors, 10' X 6'.  I may go back into the two later ones in the upcoming semester.  I hadn't worked on them as much as the first one, and after thinking about them I've decided they could benefit from a little revisiting.  They will look pretty much as you see them here though, just some more finishing layers and marks.

The show was successful.  Many people came to the opening, and it was good to hang these paintings for people to enjoy.



Spring

This was a color study of the spring colors just after a warm rain. This was from a couple weeks ago (It's more like summer now). This painting is about 3 X 6 inches.

Night

This is a painting I did looking out a window at night. There were dark clouds in the sky, and only small street lamps lighting up the land.

Drawing

This is a drawing I did at the end of the year last semester. I recently hung it (and a few other drawings) on my wall. I enjoy looking at them, and thought this would be a good piece for a blog post now even though it is not a recently made one. I like the cropping in this composition.

Kodachrome

This is one of the slides of Kodachrome I took that I've scanned. This was from the airplane flying from Philadephia to Pittsburgh. I like the view from airplanes. One can look down and see all the cars, houses, roads, and bridges. It stretches on all the way to the horizon. The snow makes the trees and human structures stand out.

Portrait

This is a portrait I made quickly of my friend Alexei as he was reading in the studio. I liked stripe on his shirt and the colors in the studio at night under the artificial lighting. He got up and left, but I kept working on it from memory at his suggestion. That was really helpful because it wouldn't have been complete if I didn't finalize the shapes more.

Winter

I made this painting right when I got back to school. I've made it my goal to make a small painting every day this semester. It's worked well so far (I've made 4 small paintings as of today) and hope to be able to learn a lot by working everyday and seeing what I'm doing.

This painting is of a tree I could see out my window. It's very Ron Donoughe inspired. A friend has already decided she wants to purchase it.

Sky

When I want to just do a little painting, I like to make small plein air paintings on masonite board. These are four paintings I did the other day as the sun was setting. They are all between 8" x 6" and 6" x 2". I did them from the painting studio windows. I'm planning on doing more of these paintings.

Figure Painting

In Painting class, we've painted figures and still lives for in class assignments. This is an image and details of the second figure assignment we had. For this painting, I wanted to focus on the light and having the figure not be lifeless. It has an unfinished quality to it because it was essentially a study done in a limited time.