“Blue Lady” on the cover of “Aces” Magazine

by Lisa Freedman
Aces Magazine

“I create art like I make chocolate chip cookies. Neither are made the same way twice.”

What We Love

Christine Alfery has been creating and selling her art since the 1960’s. In the 1990’s she was a creative force on the national interior design scene. As her style has evolved, so has the interest, intrigue and demand for her work. Christine’s paintings have been widely exhibited in museums, galleries and in corporate and private collections throughout the United States and the world.
Her artistic style shows a maturity that comes from a lifetime of creative exploration. Christine’s “experimental’’ abstractions of the real are filled with ‘’playful iconic symbols’’ which enable her to “integrate the real with the abstract.’’

Christine is deeply influenced by the abstract expressionists, including: Hans Hofman, Mark Rothko, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler and Cy Twombly, to name a few, yet her style is uniquely her own. Christine earned her Bachelor of Science degree, her  Master’s degree in Education, her MFA degree and her  Ph.D in Contemporary Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ruby Hillside

She shows her contemporary, conceptual watercolor and  acrylic paintings nationally and internationally. She competes  in watercolor competitions around the world. Christine has won over 100 national awards and is a signature member of 10 national watercolor societies. She has been in more than 60 publications.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My artwork is like a story board that speaks to my philosophical beliefs about life, the roads I have traveled and the questions I have asked and tried to answer. My work speaks to the concept of choice and the changes that choice brings about. For me choice is all about individual freedom, a freedom that can or cannot help form our realities and what we believe in.

On the Front Cover

Lady Blue and Her Magic Cape – At The Circus, an acrylic painting on canvas by featured artist Christine Alfery, adorns our cover this month.

The painting, which measures 60×50,is a featured work from Christine’s At the Circus series that will be on display at Christine’s exhibition with Artblend Gallery at art Market Hamptons in Bridgehampton, NY this July 5th-7th 2019.

Inspired by the film, The Greatest Showman, Christine’s At the Circus series draws from her rich childhood memories of the circus coming into town, and the impressions that these magical images left on her young imagination. Christine has shared that these memories of the circus fit right in with the way she looks at art as something unique and original for every performance. Christine further expresses: “I create paintings with as much childlike freedom as I can gather from such memories as an adult, encumbered in an adult world. I think as I create – how can I think and paint with the freedom I had as a child, going to magical places like a circus, where impossible things happen, where you can dream and laugh a little, dance and twirl around, wearing magical capes that engulf you in a fantasy world of fun?’’

This particular painting also inspired a poem by her friend, the esteemed poet, Elizabeth Tornes which further brings these images (and childhood memories) to life through the power of poetry.

What are your memories of the circus? We all have our own, which this series brings to life.
Lady Blue and Her Magic Cape At The Circus is one of several paintings from Christine’s At The Circus Series that will be on display with the Artblend Gallery at Art Market Hamptons, July 5-7, 2019 at The Bridgehampton Museum, 2368 Montauk Highway, Bridgehampton, NY.
For more information about the Fair, visit artmarkethamptons.com

WHERE TO FIND HER
Christine will be exhibiting with Artblend Gallery (https://artblend.com)  at Art Market Hamptons, (artmarkethamptons.com) in Bridgehampton, NY the weekend of July 5th thru 7th, 2019.

Her work is also represented by
The Evalyn Dunn Gallery (evalyndunngallery.com) in Westfield, NJ.
She is also represented by The Art Marketer of Shelter Island Heights, NY.

At the Circus

by Elizabeth Tornes

Lady Blue and Her Magic Cape

Who are these women
who flame up, spin and whirl
in velvet robes, ballet dresses,
bedecked in jewels and spandex? Lady Blue
strides to the ropes, her mouth a ring of red,
blonde tresses flying, flips
over the trapeze, easily
as a chimp, swings dizzily above us.
She rides a bike on the tightwire
while balancing a parasol
on the tip of her nose.

The clown’s face is a cross,
red slashes on white face. Her blue dog
leaps from barrel to barrel,
dances in circles on the horse’s back.
Proud and bejeweled
as Austro-Hungarian queens,
these women carry the burden of being an artist in a man’s world. I want to live like them, in a dream of my own making, fold
myself into a magic blue cape,
disappear, and reappear at will,
dazzling in a spotlight.

Inspired by Christine Alfrey’s “At The Circus” series of paintings.