We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alicia Ethridge. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alicia below.
Alicia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
From a young age I could feel the threads leading me towards my path as an artist. My upbringing in an artistic family helped me understand the fluid relationship between art and lived experience. Surrounded by my father’s otherworldly oil paintings and my mother’s novel and lush mixed media work they exemplified the importance of maintaining an art practice to transport one beyond day to day activities into a sacred space of creative exploration.
In all stages of my life I have found drawing, painting and collage soothing in challenging moments especially in times of loss. This led me to my work as a grief counselor who employed expressive art therapy with newly resettled refugee and immigrant youth. Six years into my career I became pregnant with my first child. He was diagnosed at 20 weeks with congenital heart disease. My entry into motherhood was unlike that of anyone I knew at the time. My son, required four open heart surgeries and ultimately needed a life saving heart transplant at 18 months old. Friends, families and strangers buoyed my son’s spirit. His hospital room walls were covered in art, a physical manifestation of hope for his healing and the abundance of love supporting him. When his body had physically healed and his care required less intensive support I returned to painting to process the immensity of this ordeal. This when I stepped fully into my life’s purpose as an artist. Ever since I have been vigilant in witnessing the dark corners of the human experience and painting my way to a more resilient and healed existence.
In a review of my three person show Our Beasts, in the Portland Press Herald, Jorge Arango said, “A congenital heart condition necessitated a heart transplant for Alicia Ethridge’s son when he was just 18 months old. Ethridge’s work, dense, colorful and jumbled chaotically (intentionally I believe, to mirror the tumult of emotions of the situation) often show him being shielded from danger or protected in some other way. In Snake Pit, what separates him from the writhing reptiles is an enormous red hand..Mothership feels quieter. In it, Ethridge wears peace sign earrings and is flanked by a pair of does–symbols of family, gentleness and calm. Ethridge’s artwork expands beyond the canvas and her life experiences flow into her artwork.”
Alicia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I have lived and worked in coastal Maine since 2008. I am a founding member of Seven Artists Collective. I received my MSW in Expressive Arts from the University of Southern Maine and BA in Anthropology and Art History from Montclair State University. I have also studied at the Maine College of Art and pursued spiritual studies, with an emphasis on wisdom traditions and contemplative practices. My work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across New England. I work primarily in oil paint and mixed media collage. My practice is influenced by spirituality, myth, dreams, nature and motherhood. I have found that art and prayer have much in common – both are rooted in an intense encounter involving a surrender of willfulness, openness to inspiration and lead to a deep engagement with mystery.
I paint energetic, textured worlds full of bright primaries that are inhabited by flora, fauna and humans. Abstract backgrounds slowly transform into more discernible features: eyes, mouth, wings, fur, hooves, hands, paws, beak. The imagery in my work reveals itself through contemplative art practices, dream journaling and encounters with animals in my waking life. Guidance and wisdom arise as I observe a soaring bird, the strength of horses, the tenderness of a fawn, or the fearlessness of a guardian wolf. These creatures are messengers, awakening my innate abilities and mark my growth as I navigate the expanse of the canvas, my life and beyond.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I think the most rewarding aspects of being an artist include observing my hands creatively heal wounds and make the world anew, communicating my journey with others through my unique visual language and then finding shared experience, and the feeling of complete presence when I drop into the flow, where I am so immersed I feel both at one with myself and one with the universe.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
It is strange and magical to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within me and a world at my fingertips outside of me. It is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle being here and how social reality can numb us so that the mystical wonders of our lives goes totally unnoticed. I am here. I am wildly and dangerously free. To pull back the veil of separation from other beings in the natural and spiritual world I make art. Creating awakens the holy within my bones and connects me to the primordial pulse that moves everything. In making art I am weaving threads into the web of life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.aliciaethridge.com
- Instagram: @aliciaethridge
- Linkedin: @aliciaethrige
