January Artist Spotlight
Meet Andrea Rex
Andrea Rex likes to paint from life, mainly in oils. She also enjoys printmaking and is exploring acrylics. Born in Illinois, she grew up in Syracuse, New York and moved to the Boston area in 1970. She studied biology at Stony Brook University on Long Island, and eventually got her PhD in Environmental Sciences at UMass Boston.
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND
When I was a little kid, I spent many hours drawing little stick figures, making paper dolls with large elaborate wardrobes, went through a long obsession of drawing horses, also building dioramas in my bedroom from models of dinosaur skeletons lit with flashlights. (Installations!) I took paints outdoors and painted landscapes. When I was about 12, my parents were kind enough to send me to Saturday morning painting classes at the Everson Museum in downtown Syracuse, where we would go out into the city, draw what we saw, and bring them back to class to paint. I continued with classes at the Museum throughout high school, mostly still life and portrait drawing.
I didn’t choose to try to make a living as an artist (it seemed too hard!) and instead opted for my other love–the natural sciences. Eventually I ended up working on the Boston Harbor Project studying the effects of pollution and the environmental recovery of the Harbor. But throughout my life I have always kept my hand in the arts, taking classes at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Mass College of Art, and other places.
Now that I’m retired, I have the luxury of renting studio space and have the time to pursue painting more intensively.
WHAT DO YOU PAINT and WHAT IS YOUR PROCESS?
When I think about it, the subjects of my painting haven’t changed much since I was small–I’m not really sure what that says about me. I paint outdoors, still life, people. I like to work from direct observation and only use photographs if there’s no other way to study a subject. Although I love to look at abstract works, I personally seem to need to have the stimulus of something real to look at to get started on a painting. There’s something innately interesting about translating the 3D world onto a flat plane.
I spend quite a lot of time setting up still lifes, and have recently painted a series of old bottles dug up from my backyard when a septic system was being installed. I use a viewfinder a lot, to try to find interesting angles and unusual compostions. Usually I take a fair amount of time making an accurate drawing.
Although I don’t paint purely abstractly, I am very conscious of the abstract shapes and colors and the relationship to the rectangle.
WHY DO YOU PAINT?
I think the urge to make a mark is innate in humans, we’ve been doing it since cave-people times. For me the visual arts are a process of exploration, but also, I confess to wanting to make something worth looking at. If I’m lucky I come up with something that might have a bit of unexpected beauty, or a different way of seeing the commonplace.
I don’t consciously try to express particular feelings, or any special message, it seems that the feeling emerges during the process of painting. Maybe the message is just how amazing it is to be able to see!
Andrea Rex Website