Alliene Bouchard

Artist statement:

As a studio artist, I often blend modern technologies with traditional practices of drawing, painting, sculpture and jewelry making to explore the relationship between innovation and evolution. I tend to work from the inside out, examining the relationships of components within internal and external systems that inform our understanding of ourselves and our environments as wholes, and how change over time both erodes and builds the meaning-making in our mental and spiritual worlds. By examining the mirrors of machines and biology alongside the much larger, external entities of landscapes, ecosystems and celestial bodies, I like to explore the implications of the inevitable breakdown of these systems that results in emergent evolutionary change, and the beauty of form that is reflected in both living and ancient structures.

Where do you find inspiration to create your art?

Being an artist and engineer at heart, I find inspiration in natural and mechanical systems and how these systems influence one another. I am drawn to how clusters of parts in a system affect the whole, and how environments instigate adaptation that produce new forms for the system's parts. I especially love exploring new processes and balancing highly contrasted visual and conceptual elements to create beautifully dramatic statements in my work.

"If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity." - Eckhart Tolle