The third and final installment of the Sheldon Museum’s annual Six-Week Spotlight series opens Friday with a reception for artist Alexandra Feit’s “Paintings” exhibit.
The reception runs from 5 to 7 p.m. at the museum.
The exhibit features more than a dozen abstract paintings using wax and pigment on wood. The paintings are an attempt to capture the light and mood of Alaskan winters, Feit said.
“There is something really magical about the light in winter. There is usually a lot of white and often if there is any kind of color in the water or the trees or the sun, it feels magnified in the winter because we go through such long periods of gray,” Feit said. “I also find the gray incredibly beautiful.”
Feit said she would like people to appreciate the paintings more viscerally, as opposed to intellectually.
“I’m hoping that people will try to feel them and experience them more than think about them,” Feit said. “More than using their thinking brain, try to have more of a felt experience in front of the paintings.”
While the paintings might not seem like they take a long time to produce, Feit said creating them is a lengthy process.
“My paintings are made of many thin layers of wax and pigment. The wax is repeatedly painted on and scraped off a wood board to create a lush, beautiful, layered surface. A sense of light and depth comes up subtly through the layers of wax,” she said.