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Alexandra Carter: The Mother Shell from Alexandra Carter

ARTIST STATEMENT

I paint the female body in states of transformation—pregnancy, birth, postpartum—to reveal the visceral realities of motherhood. I want to know how this experience consumes, ruptures, and remakes the self. I’m drawn to the monstrous feminine—the reproductive body as both feared and revered, vola

Growing up on a cranberry farm in Massachusetts, I was immersed in cycles of fertilization, growth, and harvest—rhythms that shape my work. Cranberries become metaphors for the reproductive body: swollen, fertile, bleeding. The harvest’s dependence on flooding echoes my fascination with contain

I often use my own body as a model, staging performances for the camera to explore personal and archetypal imagery. I draw from folklore and mythology, reimagining figures whose transformations mirror the physical and psychological shifts of motherhood. These mythic bodies—splitting, mutating—s

Through these paintings, I confront the contradictions of motherhood—its tenderness and violence, power and erasure, creation and consumption—an experience that is both universal and deeply personal.... more

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Alexandra Carter
Fruition, 2024
Ink on drafting film
42 x 36 in
$3,200

This artwork explores the interconnected cycle of sustenance and nourishment: the mother nourishes her babies through breastfeeding, while drawing her own sustenance from abundant, oversized cranberries. These cranberries — a nod to my upbringing on a cranberry farm — are a recurring symbol in my work, representing vitality, resilience, and the bittersweet fullness of life. Rendered almost pomegranate-like, they evoke both a life-giving force and the cyclical, shared nature of nourishment across generations, rooted in personal history and the landscape that shaped me.