Mardi de Veuve Alexis

Artist Statement

I am an abstract artist inspired by urbanization as a condition of contemporary culture, juxtaposed by the exquisite beauty and balance of our natural environment.  My work reflects both elements, depicted by sweeping gestural line work, textural effects, pattern and mark making achieved through mixed media and collage. Overall, I strive to communicate beauty and elements of design readily visible in virtually all aspects of everyday life. Before moving to the California desert in 2016, I worked for several years from my Venice, CA studio where I was viscerally impacted by the evolving neighborhood and demographics. There was the noise and energy of construction and changes emerging from new structures that rose vertically to unexpected new heights for this neighborhood, marginalizing once amply sun lit creative spaces.  This developing environment, along with my worldwide travels also opened my eyes to multicultural expressions of graffiti that have become rampant not only as a universal form of communication, but also as a provocative urban art language that often informs my work.

BIO

Mardi de Veuve Alexis is an abstract painter born and raised in the San Francisco, California Bay Area. After moving to the east coast in the 1980s to pursue a career in politics and diplomacy, she studied art and design at the Torpedo Factory Art Centre in Alexandria, VA; George Washington University and at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. Upon returning to California, she studied art and design at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), School of Architecture and Interior Design, while working out of her studio In Venice Beach. Mardi, who defines her art as abstract expressionism, has been painting professionally for eighteen years, experimenting with combinations of various media and textural effects, mixing charcoal, ink, pastel, acrylics, oil,cold wax and collage. Her paintings are inspired by urbanism, street art, and environmental themes, often incorporating gestural line work and contemporary forms of communication like graffiti apparent in a multicultural urban environment. Collage, mixed media, line, pattern and textural effects characterize her current body of work on canvas, panel and paper. She exhibits her work frequently in juried group and solo exhibitions and her paintings are collected throughout the country and abroad. Mardi teaches collage and mixed media workshops in throughout Southern California, including Fontana, Culver City, and Los Angeles and at the Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Desert.

Currently, Mardi is a member of Women Painters West, the Artist Council of the Palm Springs Art Museum, and the Morongo Basin Cultural Arts Council. Her work is frequently juried into exhibitions throughout the country, and she regularly exhibits her work at Gloria Delson Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Asher-Grey Gallery, Gallery 62 in Joshua Tree and at Decades and other shops on El Paseo in Palm Desert, among others.