Lorraine Alexander

Taos artist, Lorraine Alexander is an accomplished oil painter and considered to be one of the Southwest's up-and-coming fine artists. As a classically trained portraiture artist, Alexander emerged in Macon, Georgia with a successful, innovative gallery concept. Despite her blooming accomplishments in Georgia, she moved to New Mexico where she found inspiration that would remarkably transform her style. She left her studio and paint brush behind and began painting en plein air with a palette knife. The shift not only changed her style, but freed her from the constraints and rules of imposed methodologies. Today, she is a self-described colorist who paints without boundaries. Each stroke of the knife lays brilliant, variegated layers of rich textured paint that distill the landscape into elemental purity.

"Working with a palette knife may seem more random than brush work, but for me it is not. It's actually a deliberate, intuitive orchestration of carefully selected colors and the textural thickness of my application, designed to blur details so the eye sees nothing but the whole. At the same time, the technique allows me to be in the moment, and lets the paintings happen without restraint. I trust that when I lay my knife on the canvas, I'lll achieve a definition of reality that resonates with the viewer.”

Alexander was born in New York and has a rich family heritage of European artists. Her family supported her pursuit of fine art at an early age, and as a young student she was selected to participate in a gifted arts program. A graduate of Wesleyan College with a degree in Fine Arts, where she received the best paint award at the 1997 student exhibition, she continued her studies under several modern masters, including North Carolina's John de la Vega, and renowned Santa Fe artist Tony Ryder. Lorraine Alexander’s work has exhibited in New York, Macon and Hilton Head and in private collections throughout the country, including Central Georgia Heart institute. In 2001, she received the Fine Artist Award at the Macon Cherry Blossom Festival.