Isabelle Alessandra

People often ask me what inspires a piece. My work is a direct reflection of what lights me up. At the most basic level, I feel that color has inherent beauty, lines and marks on canvas can be utterly gorgeous, and basic geometric shapes have deep appeal - especially when in contrast with loose, textured backgrounds. My best work happens when I’m having an active conversation with a piece but not using words, when I’m really listening, letting a piece tell me where it needs to go. Yet, when I really think about it, it's fair to say that my approach to painting is inspired by my childhood in northern Alberta, Canada - by the layers of systems of life that surrounded me there.

I grew up playing in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and came to love the gorgeous influences of time and weather, of soil, of nurture and even the damage I observed in my physical environment. I was fascinated by old fallen trees with beautiful concentric circles, delicate lacey lichen on rocks, arrowheads, fool’s gold, petrified wood, and animal tracks that told me stories of their hunt for survival. My childhood taught me to look, to pay attention, to be present. It's the layers and layers of our lives, the ways we reveal and draw from our history that I think makes us most interesting - and so it is with the kind of art I strive to create.