Southwest Art 2017

Featured image: Three Koi In The Pond

Each year “Artists Magazine” conducts a major art competition that draws entries from around the world. The competition is divided into five categories: Abstract/Experimental, Animal/Wildlife, Landscape, Portrait/Figure, and Still Life/Interior.

Read an interview with Christine Alfery here: http://www.southwestart.com/articles-interviews/feature-articles/the-jurors-choice

What are you trying to convey in this artwork? My artwork speaks to my philosophical beliefs about life and to the concepts of choice, struggle, change, and the moral and ethical codes we live by. For me, art is about individual freedom, a freedom that can or cannot help form our realities and what we believe in. THREE KOI IN THE POND is a conceptual work. Three is a significant number for me. Water is like the rhythm of life, with its ebb and flow. The grids represent the ways we entrap ourselves, as in a gate or fence, and the
movement—the black and white dotted lines—is the current.

What is your creative process? I start with an idea or a question, choose specific colors to carry this idea, and then apply the colors very wet and begin to work the concept with the colors. The process begins very abstractly, with fluid watermedia. Next, I begin to unite or remove the different elements. I stop when I find myself saying, “Stop! Stop now!”

What makes your work unique? My work is unique when my self remains in it because I am unique, one of a kind. It is not unique if my self gets lost in the aesthetic or technique.

What do you like best about being an artist? The freedom
to choose.