Alexis Damron – Anniversary Art Exhibition

• Artist Portfolio Magazine
• Alexis Damron – Saint Petersburg, FL

I remember my parents getting divorced and then following New Years Eve of 2011 my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor the size of a lemon. She needed major surgery and I spent New Year’s in the hospital drawing in my sketchbook seated on a hospital bed. During the late hours at the hospital is when I poured out my frustration and anxiety onto the bank pages. I’d never used art as an emotional tool or release, and I created work that had meaning and drew people to my skills. After the surgery I returned to art as a means of dealing with all of my anxieties and problems. My mother’s continued radiation treatment was an extreme contributing factor to my use of art as a healing method. The pull of a brush through ink or the drag of a finely sharpened pencil was how I visualized emotion and when working on a piece it became almost like a movie to music. And each piece was a different score that soothed my stress brought my some sense of peace.
I create my artwork strictly for myself, the process in which I work is therapeutic. But I do sell my work because people can connect with it on an emotional level. The work I create can range through any level of emotions. Though usually it tends to lean more towards the darker emotions, like sadness, or unease. It is a physical release for emotion and more often than not I feel mostly negative emotions. An anxiety disorder and distrust of many things has a huge influence on my work. The purpose of my work as an artist is to show people the mirror image of their emotions so that they can relate and see it as a way to resolve their own emotion. And my hand is the instrument with which I bring my purpose as an artist to life. While my work does communicate emotion to viewers, in my actual process I am solely communicating with myself and my own inner conscious. So the result is a secondary communication after the work is completed. I take great joy in creating art, I see so few things in today’s world that display raw emotion and create human connection with people. I believe that my work creates such emotional connections and that brings me great joy.