Alicia Philley
Austin, TX
Alicia Philley is a color-based abstract artist illuminating the connections between nature, health, and community spaces.
Message
Having lived and worked in central Texas for almost 20 years, Philley’s creative practice is deeply rooted in local greenbelt trails, waterways, and neighborhood gardens. With her painted vocabulary of precise, yet flowing, linework she explores lifecycles, nature's chronicle of time, and the ways our environment influences memory and emotional health. The vibrant hues in her paintings, digital mixed-media, and sculptural works create an experience through illusionistic space, pattern, and reflective light.
Her work leans into the simplicities and nuances of color theory—which she studied in the BFA painting program at Hunter College, NYC (2005). Philley also holds a BA in journalism from Southern Methodist University (1995). Her first career as a writer and editor set the stage for her creative path. Through intentional observation that includes note-taking, photographs, sketches and video, she continues a lifelong quest to create meaning through observation and storytelling.
Philley's creative practice includes a focus on community. She is the founder of Artist Parents & Caregivers Community, which includes a free residency for local artist mothers; a board member for Mothership Studios, which produces the annual San Marcos Studio Tour; and a volunteer/advocate for the Native Prairies Association of Texas.
Her work has been exhibited around the country, including Women & Their Work Gallery in Austin, ArtSpace111 in Ft. Worth, Pleiades and Equity Galleries in New York and The Georgetown Art Center. Her exhibits have been highlighted in such publications as Glasstire, the Austin Chronicle, the San Marcos Record, KOOP radio. and NPR. Her paintings and collages are part of permanent collections at health care centers, corporate spaces and private homes across the US, as well as in Germany and Spain.
Statement
The subjectivity of sight and how nature affects our state of mind is at the core of my abstract art practice. Through a personalized language of curving, yet precise, linework layered over a broad expanse of color, I tell stories of bubbling creeks, swaying trees and the fungal networks that connect and sustain organic life.
In my acrylic paintings and sculptural forms, I recreate the experience of entering a state of flow; that calm yet energized place of getting lost in the minutia of beauty. I deconstruct the world around me into its most basic elements of color, reflective light, motion, and form. Then I reconfigure those pieces into meandering ripples that intertwine with the grain lines of my wood panels.
My digital mixed media artworks are cultivated within the realm of mycelium and mushrooms. I translate my ribboned language from paint to pixel by cutting up photos of my acrylic paintings, then stretching and twisting the pieces into entangled layers. Fertile knotted sections are replicated, spawning new artworks. The resulting images are a warped mirroring of the fungal cycle of decay, growth, fruiting and spore release. They are endless possibility.