A Love Affair · by Alanna Young

Art affairs aren’t always expected but do grow out of seeds of opportunity. For me that opportunity would be found on the other side of the world when I was bitten by the travel bug and acted on impulse when the chance arrived to travel and live in the Netherlands at the age of 17. Hundreds of galleries and museums became available at my disposal and I frantically spent most of my time collecting all the history and artistic ideas I could pack into my small suitcases. This experience would become the springboard in my love affair with all things art and culture.

Pursuing art as post secondary education has given me the opportunity to follow a passion and deepen my understanding of cultural art practices, history and an awareness of the communicative abilities of visuals. I am currently completing my final year of an undergraduate honours degree in Fine Arts at McMaster University, where the exposure to culture and creative possibilities have been plentiful and exciting.

Born and raised in southwestern Ontario this rural love affair has started to emerge back into my body of work while developing in a more urban steel town context. As an artist, I seek to find daily reference for my work in the world that surrounds me and attempt to widen the references I absorb. I am interested in the complex visual patterns that exist in our surroundings (both man made and natural) and have a desire to deepen my understanding of patterns as a way to create art. The development of surface and grounds plays a primary focus in my work while simultaneously creating depth through texture, layering and repeated elements. My love for patterns has stemmed from a long interest in organization, logic and repetition and I attempt to push beyond the categorization and into the emotive nature behind the organized controlled experience. I tend to work with printmaking, bookmaking, paper, painting, collage, photography and sculpture as a means to explore a creative mixed media body of work.

The pace of life today is so rapid that it becomes an effort to take the time to notice and observe. Much of my art practice is based on observation and it has truly changed the way I look at the world around me. There is a rhythm to the way observation develops repeats, shifts, aches and stretches; all it asks is for the required effort to just look and examine. I try to use these visual systems that exist (both natural and fabricated) and reinterpret them into my art making practice. I am influenced by the aesthetics of plant systems, waterways and organic lines to produce work that is layered, cropped, rotated and inverted. I love the abilities of repetition; there is great comfort for me in planning, organization and pattern. But it is here that these familiar sensibilities allow me to reinvent and push my work to a further place then would ever be possible instead of starting from scratch each time. It is the combination of both sets of skills (the creative and the organization) that I have found my strength and hope to these interests to strengthen the infrastructure that exists for cultural centers and organizations with a career in cultural management. I hope to one day be part of the cultural institutions that provided me with a passion for the arts and maybe even help to foster a deep creative love affair for another unknowing artist.