Acacia Alder
Artist Bio/Statement
A painter of contemporary landscapes, Acacia Alder has been making art in one form or another for more than three decades. She became a painter later in life, even though as a young student she had studied architecture at Kent State University where she also took a beginning interest in fine art. Other life choices intervened, marriage and the birth of children. But in the early 70's, she moved to Tucson, where land abundant with minerals and semi-precious stones converged with a huge native jewelry-making tradition. influenced to make jewelry, she had found her first formal art form.
Yet there was an even larger force soon to influence her; the stunning character of the Southwestern land and its unusual and unique life forms. She quickly became an avid explorer of her new home. She traveled Arizona, explored New Mexico and fell in love with Southern Utah. She visited deserts, mountains and canyons, gathering artistic impressions from all she saw.
Acacia had learned early on about the immediacy of color and texture while exploring the open fields surrounding her family home in rural Ohio. "Although I adored the beautifully tended flowers in my parents' garden, it was the open fields that grabbed my heart. Wild grasses, thistles, great tangles of barbs and berries. Years later, when I picked up a pen or a brush, it was the memories of wildness that called me."
These early memories have become a new reality as evidenced by the rich impasto strokes combined with intense color that infuse her expressive landscape paintings.
To facilitate her transition to painting, she found art instruction in a grassroots group with a gifted professional instructor. Influenced by the Fauvists and masters like Cezanne and Van Gogh, Acacia's early work in pastel drew forth a kinesthetic, emotional and spiritual connection with the natural world. By the mid 1990's she was exhibiting landscapes in both pastel and acrylic. She later turned to acrylic painting on a larger scale, sculpting the surface with acrylic gel, setting up the composition with three dimensional relief rhythm and texture.
Of these canvas, the artist says, "I want my paintings to speak with the spirit of the land, whose first language is that of color, shape, and movement. I like to paint on the edge between abstract and real. Landscape becomes more than just landscape; it is the earth, a magical place interwoven with intriguing life forms, colorful energy and ever-changing light. My intention is that the painted landscape evoke for the viewer what was triggered for me; intimate memories of personal experience tied mystically to the land. The painted surface becomes an intersection of the known and unknown. At one and the same time, I am painter and viewer; I create the painting and "walk" into it to explore. It is an enriching and spiritual experience."
Acacia's work is in many collections throughout the country.
