Biography
Alexandra is a multi-disciplinary artist whose current work includes textile wall-hangings, sculpture, painting, collage and drawing.
Her artistic quest is to find a balance between Modernist ideals of order and universal abstraction as exemplified by Mondrian with the joys, sorrows and frustrations of personal and domestic life.
As a feminist, she embraces artforms traditionally associated with women, such as stitch and textile art, but, she also paints, sculpts, and in the past made installations and performances. She does not like to isolate one artform from another but sees them as a continuum: a textile piece can flow into a painting, a painting into a sculpture. Underlying all these artforms is the continuous thread of drawing. Whether this be the natural or man-made environment, drawing acts as a meditation and as source of ideas to be developed into finished artworks.
Alexandra is an artist who believes in a spiritual dimension but whose faith is continually being tested by intellectual doubt and the intrusions of personal and domestic life. This dilemma is explored in her work, both as subject matter and in the visual language itself. Abstraction, inherited from the pioneering Modernists, has a purity untainted by the personal, but to concentrate just on that would be untruthful to the way life is. Alexandra wants to make an art of wholeness, giving value to the personal and the domestic.
The resulting visual language is one in which abstraction and figuration interact, working out their relationship in the art itself, and in the process transforming the personal into something meaningful and the universal into something personal.
Alexandra’s experimental attitude to materials and artistic practises is grounded in her knowledge of art history, a subject she has lectured on for twenty years. She is well aware of the difficulties of making something original today, but with the help from her artist heroes, artist friends and thinkers, she continues to experiment, develop and give shape to her ideas, feelings and intuitions.
Piet Mondrian, “Composition in red, yellow and blue”, 1930, oil on canvas, 46 x 46cm, Kunsthaus Zurich
Drysdale, “Domestic Landscape”, 2020, 163 x 70 x 20cm
Chronology
EDUCATION
1981-1985 1st BA (Hons) Fine Art, Chelsea School of Art, London
1986-1988 Merit Scholarship, Art Students League, New York
2009-2011 MFA, Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2018 The Artefacts of Alexandra Drysdale: Casespace, Bruton Museum, Somerset
2016 LMP Gallery, London
2011 Down to Earth, Artspace, Cambridge Watch ‘Down To Earth’ video
2011 Easter Art, Michaelhouse, Cambridge
2010 A.R.T., Changing Spaces, Cambridge
2010 Artspace, Cambridge
2007 Mary Magdalene, Lady Chapel, Ely Cathedral
2003 New Hall, Cambridge
1996 Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk
TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2021 Launch of Pitcombe Studio, Bruton, Somerset, BA10 0PE
2021 Somerset Open Studios, Pitcombe, Bruton
2016 Cambridge Open Studios
2014 Hierarcadia: Approximating Naivety, Art Language Location, Cambridge, live performance with Ernest Dalton
2012 On the Shelf, with Kato Catling, Makers Gallery, Cambridge
2010 Duo, Drysdale and Juett, Williams Art, Cambridge
1997 Peterborough City Art Gallery with Eliza Bonham-Carter
1996 Galerie Josine Bokhoven, Amsterdam with Sylvia ten Kley
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021 OCAS Biennale, Project Space, 183-185 Bermondsey St, London, SE1 3UW
2019 Zigzag, Glastonbury, Somerset Artweeks
2016 The Expanded Studio, Primary Studios Nottingham
2014 Peep Show, Changing Spaces, Cambridge
2013 The Expanded Studio, Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn, Cambs.
2013 Art Language Location, Cambridge, artlanguagelocation.org
2012 One Hundred, Changing Spaces, Cambridge
2011 Plinth, Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge School of Art
2011 If not now whenever, The Gallery, Redchurch St, London.
2011 Re:Location, St. Peter’s Church, Cambridge
2008 Kettle’s Yard Open, Cambridge
2001/1999 Elm Hill Contemporary Art, Norwich
2000/1999 Art Futures, Contemporary Art Society, London
1998 Eastern Open, King’s Lynn Art Centre, Norfolk
1996 Repetition, Southern Arts Touring Exhibition: Winchester Art College, Nuova Icona Gallery, Venice, Caco Zanaki Gallery, Aalst, Belgium ArtSway Hampshire
1996 Kettle’s Yard Open, Cambridge
AWARDS
2021 OCAS Biennale: Levison Meltzer Piggott award
2015 Research and Development Grant, Arts Council East
2005 Research and Development Grant, Arts Council East
1998 Lady Evershed Drawing Award, Eastern Open
1996 Artists’ Development Award, Eastern Arts Board
1996 British Council Award
RESIDENCIES
2017-2018 Bruton School for Girls, Bruton, Somerset
2012-2013 AA2A Cambridge School of Art
2010 In Flux, Escalator Retreat, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambs.
2007 Bundanon, New South Wales, Australia
1996 St. Mary Magdalen Church, Leintwardine, Herefordshire
Contact me Alexandra Drysdale, Artist, Bruton, Somerset, UK.