Bio…
As a re-emerging artist, Alexandra Linden would argue that time, and its companion, experience, have helped enable the evolution of her sculptural vessels, portraits and functional ‘artware’. Pieces which emanate a quiet maturity and an obsession with organic form, texture, the feminine, negative space, light and shadow, and the innate natural beauty that life presents.
Receiving an Advanced Diploma in Applied and Visual Arts with a ceramics major (North Adelaide School of Art, 1998) followed by an Honours Degree in Fine and Visual Arts majoring in drawing and painting (University of South Australia, 2009), Alexandra places a high value on technique and education, evident in the careful, fastidious nature of her practice. Weaving her artistic calling through her career as an educator (Bachelor of Secondary Education, University of South Australia, 2003) Alexandra always preferred to teach via the tangible mediums of writing, painting and creation, working later in marketing roles where she created eye-catching illustrations, designs and labels for some of McLaren Vale’s most recognised wineries.
2021 was a year that bought change, challenge and clarity to Alexandra as she found herself irrevocably drawn back to the studio, a space where she feels innately herself as she creates. While she would consider herself unattached to any particular medium, her current artistic exploration resides in the grounding medium of ceramics, a grounding material, reinforcing the sense that she is returning home to herself. In clay she finds strength and versatility, embracing the joy of using an organic, primitive tool for expression and functionality, forming a conduit between earth and gravity while bringing structure and aesthetic to an amorphous medium.
Alexandra creates a line of functional and ornamental wares which can currently be found at The Jam Factory Adelaide, Fleurieu Arthouse McLaren Vale, Willunga General, and at Rollo, Port Elliot. She is building multiple bodies of work to exhibit and is regularly commissioned to create individualised, bespoke pieces.
Artist Statement…
I started creating art around the same time I started talking…it’s an integral part of my language and ability to communicate. I can often draw, create or gesticulate things with more fluidity than I can say it!
My inspiration is an unconstrained thing, coming in from everywhere; people, the feminine, beauty and intrigue in nature, texture, light, shadow, gravity, form, functionality, flavour, language, a memory that inspires a feeling, a moment in time…all things I find aesthetically or emotionally captivating. I’m becoming increasingly drawn to and fascinated by subtle elements life presents when you’re quiet, observant and curious. Things that may have always been there and now seen through different, more seasoned eyes. Unspoken words. An image presents itself in my mind’s eye and I feel an overwhelming sense that I need to immortalise it in some way. There are so many of these moments in each day that I would need to live multiple lives to create them all, and at times feel overwhelmed to a point where I’m frozen with indecision!
I don’t feel bound by any one medium, and clay is currently speaking my language. I’m exploring ways to challenge myself and the medium, a constant push and pull, finding I feel ‘at home’ using this humble medium.
After spending 20 years pursuing more reliable and less fear inducing income sources and supressing my visionary compulsions, I’m bursting at the seams with creative flow.
