please waitSANTA FE - Domains of Intimacy: New Work by Alexandra Eldridge opens with a 5-7 p.m. public reception Friday, July 20 at Victoria Price Art & Design, at the gallery's new location in Pacheco Park, 1512 Pacheco St., Building B. The exhibit will close Aug. 9.
For Domains of Intimacy, Eldridge has created a group of paintings in pigmented Venetian plaster on panel, in some cases including collage, resulting in the luscious colors and creamy surfaces that have become her trademark. The exhibit will include approximately 20 new Eldridge paintings ranging from very small (12" x12") to very large (53" x 42").Eldridge's new body of work arises - as does all her work -- from an intense reflection on the spiritual realm. Recently, her inquires have focused on alchemy and mysticism -- ancient belief systems about personal and universal transformation -- and the means of invoking desired changes in ourselves and our world.
Ovals, spirals, ladders, butterflies, boats, trees and chairs all play metaphorical roles in Eldridge's narratives of the journey of life. The artist says she sees certain images in her mind's eye, begins to paint them, and then allows the painting to develop as it seems to "want'' to.
In one of the largest works in Domains of Intimacy, called Les Mysteres de la Main (The Mysteries of the Hand), Eldridge collaged portions of a circa 1900 map of New York City as the background for a painting of a human hand rising from a pool of water. Five small colored balls seem to float off the thumb's tip. The hand was inspired by an exploration of palmistry, she said.
"One night I just `saw' the hand and the balls bouncing around it,'' Eldridge said. While making the painting, she decided the balls represented new and vibrant energy in her life. Elsewhere in the painting are small collages map images of the world's continents. "This is about voyaging, and being lost -- which I like to be -- because that's how you get found, and learn things you didn't know before,'' she said.
Several of the paintings in this body of work reference images Eldridge captured in photos while exploring one of the world's most famous resting places, Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where Edith Piaf, Colette, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and other luminaries are buried. Trees, vines and leaves sprinkled throughout the paintings were inspired by thoughts of resurrection that arose as she wandered through the cemetery.
Other works relate to personal memory. Night Knowledge features an old, comfortable upholstered chair from Eldridge's childhood, a chair she now has in her own home. Butterflies bear strings that are tied to the chair, as if they are carrying it off, resurrecting the past and transforming it.
Eldridge also plumbs the spirit in her titles, often using lines of poetry that she has jotted down and kept. Thus, she borrowed from Rainer Maria Rilke for the title of Fear Not The Strangeness You Feel.
"I often feel like I'm operating in a slightly different reality than many other people,'' she explained. Knowing that others must feel the same way, the painting and its title-which she has written on its surface - are an exhortation to accept that sense of oddness, of not fitting in, since the tradeoff is a deeper experience of life.