With the aid of a grant from the Ontario Arts Council, Alana
was given enough time to play with these ideas in her wonderful new paintings.
“Lantern Keeper,” featuring a barefoot woman in the forest with her jar of
fireflies, is a good example of her new work. Alana’s deft handling of oil
paint (“amazing mush” she calls it) is a joy to observe. Backgrounds are
complete works, not filler, which Alana treats and uses to great effect to
place her subjects in real and allegorical settings. Light and shadow dance
over the skin of her subjects, reacting and firmly setting the characters
within a story – a happening of some sort, where the subjects are absorbed in
their playful activity. Much is alluded to but nothing is resolved, much like
the act of playing itself. These moody images, focusing on a singular
character, inspire the viewer to ask, “what’s her story.”
Alana felt that the love her friends used to have for
childhood activities were fading in their memories. “Losing memories is normal.
Memories are fluid. They make us human, but losing them is also sort of a
scary,” Alana says. That tone of thought can be seen in other paintings where
striating interference lines scratch the surface, obscuring some of the imagery
and reminding the viewer that something unreal is going on. Thankfully the
strength of the images, the wonderment and enjoyment the subjects find in their
activity indicate that Alana is optimist. There’s enough hope and resolve to
keep positive memories alive that make Alana’s work brilliantly humanist, and
make Alana’s paintings and career worth great attention.
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