Charles Alexander

Region: Pacific Coast

I use paint, lace, and mesh in the construction of my work. This choice of materials came from my interest in both clothing design and contemporary painting practices. Common and mass-produced textiles have provided me with readymade stencils that help me create a form of representational mark-making that links the image back to the object from which it was made. Painted passages and stenciled areas create layers that weave in and out of the picture plane, thus obscuring the relationship between figure and ground while allowing the history of the painting to be both present and absent simultaneously. This methodology promotes a unified plane that seems to be entangled in its own history and process; the picture plane is writhing and undulating, pushing and pulling, within itself. The accumulated layers of information result in a battle of movement, color, references, and associations, all of these elements vying for varying degrees of presence and/or absence.