Alexandra McLain

Northumbria University Fine Art graduate Alexandra McLain uses bold flashes of oil paint on plywood to craft images which are ‘born from the vapid and indulgent culture of fashion and advertising.’ Noting the transience of the images in their neutered state on the glossy magazine page, McLain chooses to immortalise them with her paintbrush, advocating the unique ability of paint ‘to exceed the two dimensionality of an image and take on a life of its own.’ The vibrant fluorescence of McLain’s painted subjects is offset by their wooden background - an interplay that the magazine cannot provide - giving the images a virile dynamicity. The artist exploits ‘the wood’s predisposition to tolerate the frantic gestures’ of her model subjects. At a time when much of art is charged with heavy criticism of today’s media dominated society, McLain’s approach is somewhat refreshing: whilst she accepts the false reality within which the stimulated identities of advertisements exist, her art unashamedly embraces the luxurious indulgence that they provide.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My paintings are born from the vapid and indulgent culture of fashion and advertising. These images have little longevity in their original form, but the sumptuous qualities of the paint and the dynamic nature of the application; the sometime confused figure/ground interplay provided by the fleshy ply, and the wood’s predisposition to tolerate the frantic gestures give the paintings a dynamic and reality they cannot possess on the magazine page.