Alisa Coffey is originally from South Louisiana, where she lived and worked in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.  She graduated with honors from Louisiana State University with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts, having studied painting and drawing under Ed Pramuk, Robert Warrens and Melody Guichet.  She has received numerous awards for her art including the Mariam Coe Award and the Baton Rouge Art League’s Annual Artist Award.  She has exhibited in regional, international and juried shows. Her oil paintings are held in private collections in the South East and New York.  She now lives and works with her two daughters in North Atlanta.

Artist Statement 

My paintings are not really a recording of a visual image, but more of a response to the image or experience; a glimpse and a recollection within an abstract terrain.  I look for things at antique shops and draw from remembering the way the shape and presence made me feel.  Certain patterns, textures and objects have always drawn me in, like:  the textures of stone work, musical instruments, baskets, weathered wood moldings, salvaged relics, bamboo, the satiny draped material of ball gowns and the ballooning curtains in southern plantations, the transparency of layers and the solidity of iron work, as well as, fresh fruit and fish from a farmer’s market.  Once I have a place to start, I try to work with a series of related images. 

The series I have been working on lately incorporates recycled materials, not just as inspiration, but also as foundation and medium.  I have rescued quite a bit of wood, metal and other materials that would otherwise be headed for land fills.  Some materials can be reclaimed and are as good as new, while it is the very imperfections in other materials that draw me to them.    Still, I like for things to have balance of form and color, as well as, their own space, just not necessarily entirely on my canvas.  I want you to feel invited into the composition and the intimacy that comes with looking deeper to find other things you didn't expect.  With casually adjusted edges, it may not be so obvious where I started, and that is fine…because I would rather a person find something that they can grab onto or a way that they can interpret my painting, so that it speaks to them. Sometimes image distortion makes things seem even more real than they are. It is about living and breathing and experiencing life and art.

I think a lot about the color field painters like Rothko and Deibenkorn, and I employ some of their thin layering, but I cannot abandon the need for expressionistic painterly brush strokes and strong, juxtaposed color relationships.  I love Mondrian’s rhythm and his ever-changing relationships, the glowing compartmentalized colors of Rouault’s “The Old King” and the dark form shaping shadows of the renaissance painters.   Most importantly, I acknowledge God, as the master artist.