ALYSSA FOLLANSBEE

Alyssa Todd Follansbee is a multimedia artist based in Beacon, New York. Her work explores the internal struggle of balancing our outward and inward lives.

 

Alyssa grew up as the youngest of three daughters in Mystic, Connecticut. She studied figurative oil painting and sculpture at Indiana University- Bloomington, Intaglio Printmaking at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy, and Graphic Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She graduated with a B.A. in Studio Art and a minor in Art History from Indiana University in 2009, and went on to earn her Masters in Art Education from Brooklyn College in 2014. Her thesis researched how personal meaning based artwork affected students creativity and engagement in the art classroom. After working for years as a pre k- 8th grade New York City public school art teacher, she now devotes her time to creating art, running her arcade bar, and raising her family in Beacon, New York. 

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Utilizing figurative subject matter with surrealist elements, her paintings reflect themes of self-image, loss, motherhood, and family. Although her subjects are typically studied from life and old photographs, exaggerated color palettes and simplified imagery serve to distort the representational into the realm of memory and imagination. Realistic imagery, invented patterns and flattened, painterly forms are juxtaposed to convey ambiguity and defy absolutism. Reflective of an ever present fascination with the push and pull between our experience in our physical space and our own private minds, her work seeks to transport the viewer into an alternate world where nothing is certain, except your own perspective.