If I were to classify myself into one category as an artist, it would be a landscape painter whose work fluctuates back and forth between the representational and the abstract. Ultimately, the practice has become about exploration for me as a painter. My work as an observer is about discovering the unorthodox, often overlooked beauty seen within the landscape and presenting it to the viewer.

 In my paintings I try to capture a feeling, or the feeling of several thoughts. Lately they’ve been related to the climate crisis, but sometimes it’s not that serious. Through introspective writing exercises, play, and exploration of train-of-thought, I look for recurring themes and intertwine them with current interests like ecofeminist ideology and cowboy culture. It should be noted that this work is not necessarily encompassed by a narrative, although perhaps a narrative could be drawn.

 My paintings are about complexity. Richly dense, abstract surfaces created through an ouroboric process of sanding, stenciling, and extruding, as well as the more traditional application by brush. References to Renaissance paintings—whether in image or color palette—populate the recent work, establishing a ground for exploration and excavation. The resultant density becomes paradoxically responsible for imbuing the compositions with vibrating luminosity, even as it roots their presence in the material world.

 As a queer body raised in a postcolonial context in Colombia, my identity was shaped in the shadows of North American normativity. My sense of self was further confounded by a series of migrations that my family undertook in search of work and a more prosperous future. Moving through varying conservative and homophobic cultures in Louisiana and Texas, I have formed a disembodied identity that is not attached to any specific homeland and has always been challenged by the general norm.

 Alexander’s mixed ethnic background as the daughter of a Polish immigrant with Korean ancestry and a Michigan local with European ancestry profoundly shapes her perspective on connection to place as well as how identity is influenced by culture and biology. She examines the natural behaviors and landscapes that each of us are drawn to and the hidden reasons for which they form connections.

 My work is about the press of time on the female body and the wear and tear of our cultural beliefs on the contemporary female psyche. It looks back at the assumptions and fantasies of my particular era—coming of age in the ‘80s; motherhood in the ‘90s—and identifies the misogyny, both internalized and external. My work also considers how the body is measured and evaluated, and speaks of the relationship we have with our own bodies in a shifting context.

 My paintings illustrate my autobiography. They portray the relationships between me, my family, and chosen family and the touchpoints we’ve shared. These entangled elements are the atomic units of who I am, where I’ve been, and where I am going. My mark making considers the desires of my subjects. In depicting the people I’m most fortunate to know, I honor their vision of themselves as my loved ones. The images I use to create range from life studies, staged and candid photo shoots, drawings, and mother-approved images.

 William Schaeuble is an American painter, amateur outdoorsman, and aspiring bird watcher. His work focuses on telling stories of his personal life in connection to the broader world of contemporary culture, art history, and the great outdoors. It’s semi-autobiographical, filled with figures, animals, nicknacks, lovers, enemies, locations, and themes that all come from his own experiences. Schaeuble depicts certain memories and moments from his life that stand out enough to spend extra time with.

 My paintings are a series of spontaneous, improvised choices, made as I feel and react to relationships within their evolving surfaces. These works depend on form, color, and the tactile realities of paint. As markers of time, these works collect deposits which become their surfaces and layers and evidence of my choices in the studio. I think in terms of looseness versus precision, as well as thickness, flatness, and my desire for colors. I want a whole that’s somehow connected and worked through, one that allows the viewer to find space and can take a sustained gaze.