Join us for the opening of this exhibition featuring the work of Lancaster artist Alicia Byler!
“It began on a sunny day in Mexico, February 2022. My shadow emerged in front of me, perfectly placed. And suddenly there she was in the clear water of the lagoon inviting me. My breath caught; who was this creature? My doppelganger, a creative beckoning. And I felt enamored and I responded to the call: yes.
This discovery led to the Water Nymph, Weirdo Goddess and Little Love Stories series, all tied together in a surrealist imagining of my curiosity about our relationship with nature (and each other) and how we communicate, the sensual connections. If we pay attention, the Weirdo Goddess and Water Nymphs emerge and appear as apparitions of nature offering small gestures, gifts and amulets of protection we receive via portals like water, plants, animals, rest and daydreams.”
Collage, perhaps more than most other mediums, has an “automatic” quality. In the sense that the maker searches for imagery until their eyes land on an image and something signals “this is what you’ve been looking for”. Sifting through images, colors, textures, shapes, and words becomes a mission of expression and conceptual understanding. For Alicia, the results are as much artworks as they are visual communications with a universal consciousness. Between each layer she pins inspirations, resolutions reside inside the structures she builds, and contemplations breathe in the negative space. Creating narratives, atmospheres, and landscapes that pull on the threads of dreams, memory, and the thoughts that reside in the spaces between. Poetic and meticulous, at times humorous while also a touch haunting.
