Alina's Artist Statement

My artwork reflects a unique perception of the world around me as I attempt to grasp it through photography, painting, and drawing.  Photography allows me to express myself impulsively due to the immediacy, volume, and potential for manipulation. I primarily work in black and white film in various formats, and am attracted to the prolonged process needed to create a print. I use photography as a form of memory, capturing a string of moments in time that simultaneously record the past and present as they await the future. My attraction to self-portraits stems from a desire to record the camera's gaze that supplants myself as the creator.  In this way, the camera becomes a being with its own perceptions that I attempt to understand through the photos created. The pinhole grasps a reality unseen by the naked eye that produces a dreamlike state.  It enables me to depict this sense of movement and searching that I feel within my life as I flow from one moment to the next. It allows me to grasp both the tangible and intangible while relinquishing control and giving the power to the camera. The subject matter is unimportant as the pinhole perceives and warps it with its own judgment, presenting a version that could have never been imagined. My photographic work is constantly evolving through my struggle and desire to make sense of reality as I interact with myself, others, and my environment. 

My charcoal and ink work match photography’s immediacy as the mediums allow me to create a scene quickly and emotionally. I generally focus on landscapes and the model, as I can achieve a romantic and dramatic image through the gestural nature of ink and charcoal. Oil painting, for me, is about mastering the medium through technique and light in space. In my paintings, the meaning and intention is found in the search for color and the relation of the forms. Throughout my drawings and paintings there is a willingness and desire for change, as seen in their openness and ability to be reworked.