Alice Case

What are the major themes you pursue in your work?

I am interested in creating socially engaging paintings that reflect a sense of our current moment in time, while also imagining alternate possibilities to our reality. My work is heavily influenced by physics, namely the possibility of alternate dimensions, and a belief that there is more to our reality than what we can see or process with the human brain.

How did you first get interested in your medium, and what draws you to it specifically?

Everyone draws growing up and I found that as I got older I could escape into a 2D world for hours on end. This served me well, especially through troubling times. I pursued both painting and sculpture in college (and loved both) but ultimately found that I could say more with the language of paint, and that I can better investigate notions of reality and existence through the medium.

How has your style and practice changed over the years?

Well, as with most students the focus begins with working representationally, learning form, proportion, the basics. I still enjoy working from life as an investigative practice, but as I reached the end of grad school in my mid twenties I found that I was more interested in finding a reality that exists beyond the visible, and that this could only be done through abstraction.

What was the best advice given to you as an artist?

Figure out how to allow your intuition and instinct to take over. Not your brain.

Prefer to work with music or in silence?

I start my day in silence as I sit and develop a plan for what I’m trying to accomplish in the work. Once I’ve got a plan I seldom work in silence. Primarily I listen to podcasts (Art, Science, Radiolab, This American Life, short fiction, almost anything really) Sometimes world news like BBC or Aljazeera. But I love rocking out to great music when I’m in the right zone.