Artalla Studio

Alla Broeksmit, born in Ukraine, lives and works between London and New York. A. Broeksmit’s colorful paintings are concerned with portraying the figure in bold and rich colors. A continuous interest in personal memories, auto-fiction and invented mythologies run through her paintings. Her subjects, often times family members, friends or even herself, somehow take on a complex individuality and emotional presence. They explore and extend the understanding of portraying the figure by playing between the observed subject and the artist’s imagination, the insight given by her sitters and the paint itself. A. Broeksmit builds her paintings with abundant and audacious colors creating enigmatic spaces. Between painterly textures and mark making, she offers a palimpsest of visual experiences. Treating the figures as a way to engage emotionally with the viewer, she is particularly interested in the intersection between the familiar and the unfamiliar juxtaposing the felt experience with the physical memory of the artist’s hand. Her ongoing exploration of different materials and mediums has - most recently - been revealed into sculptures and layered monotypes. These new pieces are breaking the space of the canvas while holding on to the intimacy of her painting practice. Her intermedia sculptural work has allowed her to explore gestural abstraction, color and space. This new series is a reflection on our chaotic environment; forms are intertwined, combining a rough surface with soft and pastel colors. As seen in her painting, the transition between forms, narratives and imaginative spaces is here explored. Her works on paper and layered monotypes, created through various mediums, holds a close connection to the sculptural works presenting a riveting dialogue between the two.