Art Beat: Remembering UMD grad student Alex Landry, her talent, and her love of painting
Editor's Note: This column discusses suicide. You are not alone; there is support for you. You matter, and your life matters. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 9-8-8 or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
Some months ago, I reached out to the creative community, asking a simple question in anticipation of an article that I was contemplating: “Who are the South Coast artists under the age of 40 that I should know…that everyone should know?”
The most frequent answer was Alex Landry, who was an MFA graduate student at UMass Dartmouth. I soon saw her work in two local exhibitions, coincidentally on view at the same time. One was “Emerging Figures: Figurative Art by Contemporaries” at the New Bedford Art Museum, curated by her good friend and homegirl Taylor Hickey, both from Lake Charles, Louisiana.
The other was the “2023 MFA Thesis Exhibition” at the UMass University Art Gallery. I was particularly impressed by her paintings when I visited to take notes for a review. I wrote of one of her untitled paintings, that it “reverberates with the crazed, frenzied motion of a Francis Bacon.” Of another I said it “might make old painting students nostalgic for the funky institutional studio, with oily fingerprints on everything, open art books on a table left by a mentor passing through, coffee gone cold…and with the sweet dizzying perfume of turpentine in old pickle jars. It’s perfect.”
I standby that assessment. It was perfect. In her work, I sensed an old soul.
As part of her artist statement for the MFA exhibition, she wrote of her subject matter: “discarded objects, dirty plates, empty bottles, bits of trash, disheveled blinds, haphazardly strewn about books and papers” as narratives of anxiety. The last line of her statement read “I seek to explore the act of painting these objects as a form of redemption.”
And I thought “What does a young woman need to be redeemed for?”
Between the time my review was submitted and it was published, Alex Landry took her own life. Like everyone else in the local art community, I was rocked by the news. I only met her once. She was charming and she was beautiful and she was one hell of a painter.
I will let her paintings and the words of some who knew far better than I offer greater insight.
Hickey wrote, ”She was incredible at portraits but still somehow always improving. She got really good at capturing likenesses from life. You could instantly recognize friends of hers by her drawings just from her rendering of their face, which is not an easy task. And she would do it from life as you sat across from her at a restaurant table, not even trying to sit still.”
She continued, noting that “she loved living in the heart of the city, commuting on foot, taking in the sights, and embracing all the random, unique people she encountered along her way.”
Another close friend, Amanda Watkins, said “She was so vivacious and kind. She was always willing to lend an ear. She loved PBR. She never went anywhere without a sketchbook and would draw everything. She was there for me during some rough times. She was a fierce friend. She had so much love for her mom and her family. I will forever miss her and I am so grateful she was in my life.”
Elena Peteva, an Associate Professor of Art Design at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMD, had this to say:
“Alex truly loved painting. A small young woman, creating these large and impressive works. It was incredible how fearless and eloquent she was in the language of painting. It was all about painting, not what her work was about or what it meant…a real painter’s painter. In working with Alex as one of her two primary graduate faculty advisors, we got to know each other well.
“In the midst of our studio conversations, her sense of humor would surface, calling me her ‘Painting Mama’ with a big smile, and we would continue talking about the shape relationships in her compositions or the color temperature of the shadow mass of a building next to its warm sun-bathed light.”
With a heavy heart, Peteva accepted Alex’s MFA degree at the graduation ceremony on May 12.
Another of Alex’s graduate advisors, Associate Professor of Art and Design Anthony Fisher, wrote:
“Yesterday — a week ago — in the morning, I learned Alex had taken her life.
“I slept-walked much of the day until realizing there was unmixed paint drying out in my studio. Thinking it would only take twenty minutes, I went in there and lost myself for two hours. Not my mind, but my body suddenly, violently shouted goddamnit Alex!! I was soulfully lost in the pleasure of my paint — my only nirvana — and I was suddenly so angry (that) Alex would never feel or know paint again.
Alex loathed talking and reading about art. In particular, she despised writing about art. She only enjoyed making it. With all her bitter cast of demons, Alex loved to paint and appeared most alive doing it.
She was an unapologetic formalist and she learned very quickly and craftily how to build a real painting. Alex would expand the space and then shrink it, carefully carve out certain priorities, clarify shapes and colors, tighten and control intensities…Alex knew how to relentlessly tune a rectangle of messy inert stuff into an instrument that could evoke beautiful notes and chords.
Alex was painfully shy about concepts and narratives and the meaning behind her work. She said she liked to look at junk and just paint it. I quote, ‘I paint things as I see them but the process reveals how I am. Messy, unfinished parts are important because I wish to be seen for my reckless mistakes and carelessness. I want my art to be rebellious and crude and emotional like an adolescent because that is how I feel.'”
Alexandra Danielle Landry was a gifted artist, loving friend, daughter, sister and much more, who will continue to be mourned by the South Coast artist community and well beyond.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 9-8-8 or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Art Beat pays tribute to UMD grad student, artist Alex Landry
