WINTER SOLSTICE IN THE DESERT

notes from the artist: “yesterday i started the morning talking about doulas and ended the night contemplating liminal spaces and found myself in rabbit’s pose, wishing i could be in a womb — isn’t that strange — and wondering how to mimic that feeling as a grown woman. maybe if i could tunnel myself into the earth or weave a cocoon of my scraps of canvas and wrap myself in it until the spring so instead i laid my head back and imagined the colors of the medial space, when your gaze is soft and all but closed but winter sunlight is still seeping in through the soft edges of your skin and those floating flecks of something or other appear because you squeezed your eyelids too tightly and the dark blue of the stars (or is it white?) and anyway with solstice just around the corner what does it matter, since dark will turn to light again anyway, soon..”

WINTER SOLSTICE IN THE DESERT invites softness and is part of a body of work created in the winter time, where new intentions are preparing for their later births. The painting is painted on raw canvas, it has finished edges that wrap around the stretcher and ships with hanging hardware pre-installed; painting can be hung framed or unframed.

Artist Alex Maceda utilizes a process-driven approach that combines layers and layers of acrylic washes, water, and found materials from her desert environment to create simultaneously chaotic yet calming compositions that change as the viewer changes. Alex’s process is ritualistic in nature, often employing sacred plants in prayer, some of which make it onto the compositions via ash or charcoal.