Wanderings: Arista Alanis and James Secor | Clifford B. West and Rebecca Lawrence Gallery Entry | Opening reception: Friday, October 18, 5-7 PM
Conversations with the artists: Saturday, November 16, 2-3:30 PM.
In July 2023, when we began planning the 2024 exhibition series, we thought that Vermont artists Arista Alanis and James Secor would be a delightful pairing to ring in the fall season by filling the walls of the Clifford B. West Gallery with an explosion of color. Alanis and Secor are artists whose love of the medium and dedication to daily painting practice are apparent to anyone looking at their work. If you have ever picked up a paintbrush and encountered all the colors of the rainbow, then you know that making a painting can be challenging and laborious. But Alanis and Secor make you believe that these works were accomplished effortlessly; they are inspired, hopeful, and jubilant. In visiting their exhibition, you will be swept away, wandering through a color story that weaves between memory and moment.
Arista Alanis’s oil paintings traverse figurative landscapes and abstraction, occasionally incorporating charcoal and pastel sketches. Routine and preparation are vital in Arista’s studio practice, where music plays a key role. The gestural paintings express sensations drawn from memories, places, and patterns; the intensity is manifested through the painterly application, observed through the movement and marks of paint on canvases. She is endlessly inspired by her travels, especially to the Aegean Sea. Yet her work is not about specific places but significant moments that ignite a feeling of being alive in space. The interplay of emotions and spirituality creates both authenticity and magical moments. She feels that these moments, as described by 20th-century painter Philip Guston, “sharpen vision, revealing a unique truth.”
James Secor’s compositions often come from quick on-site sketches, small line drawings of a street scene, or a view out the window. Once back in the studio, he makes more elaborate versions of the drawings to refine detail and composition. Drawings are translated into the paintings– which are varied, even as his style is consistent. He works primarily in acrylic paint but has begun to explore the possibilities of gouache in recent years. When looking at his paintings, pattern and color are evident: hills become blue or pink, and the variation of organic forms– whether observed in nature or his living room, transforms into formal compositions composed of flat color planes with quirky lines scraped through to previous layers of the painting. He doesn’t make these transformations lightly however. Each carefully thought-over color and mark on the surface impacts the reading of every other mark, and the finished painting is an invented balance rendered through labor and time.
Biographies:
Arista Alanis is a third-generation Mexican American who spent most of her youth growing up in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. She earned a BFA from Texas Woman’s University and an MFA from Louisiana State University. Alanis moved to Vermont in 1995, where she began working as a staff artist at the Vermont Studio Center (VSC). She was the School Arts Coordinator for the Vermont Studio Center for twenty years in partnership with Johnson Elementary School. As a teaching artist, she created, organized, and developed a successful school art program that allowed children to express themselves artistically. Since 1989, Alanis has displayed her art at numerous national exhibitions, and her work is part of many public and private collections. In the summer of 2024, she had a solo show at the Iridian Gallery at Diversity Richmond in Virginia. Other exhibitions include Mountains at Collioure by Jared Quinton in 2022 and Made in Vermont, at the Hall Art Foundation in 2019. Alanis was a featured artist in the 2023 spring publication of Iterant, Quarterly Poetry and Art. Her artwork is the book cover of poet Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. Arista Alanis is a Vermont Arts Council FY2024 Creation Grantee. She continues to live in northern Vermont, where she spends her days painting, working part-time at VSC, and taking endless walks.
James Secor grew up in Eastern Kentucky and has lived in Montpelier, VT for the last 10 years. Most of his painting experience has been exploring color relationships and developing a vocabulary of form, using sketches as a starting point. More recently his work includes narratives about our interactions with cell phones, through paintings and drawings, which culminated in a show called #nomophobia. In 2022, Secor was invited to exhibit in Interplay at the well-known annual fall exhibition at The Kent Museum, Calais, VT. He is a member of the Front Gallery in Montpelier, VT.
