• Post category:art / body art

Artist Alexa Meade Shares Her Process and Work: Your Body Is My Canvas.

 Artist Alexa Meade on if it's hip, it's here

By applying paint to her subjects rather than to canvas, artist Alexa Meade turns people, food and still lives into 3D installations as 2D paintings.

Artist Alexa Meade

Artist Alexa Meade
above: Alexa sits beside one of her painted subjects

Alexa Meade uses paint and a paintbrush, like most artists. But she applies the non-toxic paint directly onto her subjects (mostly people and some food) and turns their three-dimensional appearance into a two dimensional one.

artist Alexa Meade at work
above: Meade at work

She then photographs the subject against a background creating a combination installation/painting. The resulting optically distorted portraits flatten the subject, foreground and background into one continuous plane, challenging the viewer’s perceptual boundaries.

Alexa Meade’s TED Talk in Edinburgh, June 2014, ‘Your body is my canvas’:

Spectacle (installation and final art):

Blue Print (Meade at work, final art and installation):

Hesitate (created by painting a person and placing them in milk.):

Head Trip (in progress and final art):

The two works above, Milk and Head Trip, were created in conjunction with Sheila Vand. See their collaborative works here.

Grapefruit:

Egg On Egg:

Transit (installation at Train Station, front and back):
Transit - front and back Alexa Meade IIHIH

One of my favorite series of Alexa’s is “Art on the Streets” where she paints her human subject in black and white and photographs them against urban graffiti:

On The Downlow:

Risen:

Martyrdom (below left) and Art On The Street (below right):

The making of “Risen”:
Risen by Alexa Meade

Double-Take, a self-portrait:
double take by alexa meade

all images courtesy of and ©Alexa Meade. Video courtesy of TED talks

Alexa Meade