We’ve all seen figure painting with live models. It’s been done since the beginning of time, but have we ever seen the live model being painted as the live model? I know, sounds a bit confusing but take a look at the art of Alexa Meade. She paints on the live model to create scenes where you’re not sure if you’re actually looking at a real live person or a painting. Alexa Meade has had her work featured a ton of publications, including The Washington Post, The London Telegraph, The Guardian, USA Today, Spiegel, La Repubblica, AOL.com, Yahoo! News, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The Today Show, Al Jazeera, Nippon Television, NY Arts Magazine, American Contemporary Art Magazine, Art Daily, Art Info, Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz Magazine, Huffington Post, Slate Magazine, Wired Magazine, Nylon
Alexa Meade’s portraits spring from a long-term fascination with the illusions inherent in representational media. Rather than paint on canvas, she applies paint directly to her subjects — the people, as well as the objects surrounding them and the background. She then photographs the ephemeral installation/painting. The resulting optically treacherous portraits collapse the subject, foreground and background into one continuous plane, challenging the perceptual boundaries between 2D and 3D.
