It seems that nowadays, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a ground-breaking artist who is primarily a painter. Throughout all these centuries of art, paint has gotten through patterns, symbolism, surrealism, abstract painting, photo-realism, impressionism, expressionism, it has been applied, thrown, dripped and also absent from the canvas. Really, it is hard to imagine how a painter could innovate.

And indeed, Alexa Meade is not inventing a new way to treat the paint-canvas relationship. Her oeuvre needs to be classified differently – she paints, she photographs, she stages and performs. The way she works is, she creates the background and the props, and when everything is ready, she paints her model and photographs the result.

Which part of the process if the main part? Is it the preparation? The paint as it is applied to the objects and the model to create light effects? Is it the way the photograph is staged? Is it the relationship between the artist and the model? Is it simply the photographs that come out of the shoot? Who is performing? Is it the artist or the model? Is this a collaboration?

The result of Alexa Meade’s work is a question to the history of art. It makes the viewer think about composition, subject choice, and the relationship between the artist and his work. Indeed, what will the viewer think next time he is confronted to an expressionist chef d’oeuvre like Van Gogh’s On the Threshold of Eternity?

Possibly, his gaze will have changed, even if it is just slightly. He will feel less removed from the painted man and from the artist. In this way, the performance aspect of Alexa Meade’s work reveals the artist and the process of creation. Through performance and photography Alexa Meade re-writes the history of painting and brings it a new life – what more can an artist do?

Alexa Meade’s website: http://alexameade.com/
Watch Artist Alexa Meade’s Canvas Is the Human Body on PBS.