The Living Paintings of Alexa Meade

Washington DC artist Alexa Meade was set on a career path in politics long before she began painting and interned on Capitol Hill for 4 years, until an elective art class changed her life. The professor challenged his students to create a sculpture that felt like a landscape but was not a sculpture of a landscape. This simple query sent Alexa on a mission of creativity and soul searching that would help her find art as her life’s true passion and pioneer her own unique style of using the human body as a canvas. By using abstract patterns and impressionist brushwork on people she effectively transforms them into living paintings in a truly surreal juxtaposition of art and life.

Alexa describes her process and how it helped her to change career paths towards a more fulfilling destiny:

“I decided to see what it would look like if I put black shadows on the human body. And then painting not only shadows but also a full mapping of light in grayscale, highlights, darks, everything coming together in a mask of paint. Just by creating a mask of shadow and light with paint, it completely transformed the space. After I discovered this, I think I just had to leave politics behind and make my job teaching myself how to paint, through the process of inventing this new style of painting.”

All images courtesy of Alexa Meade. View more at her home page or visit her on Facebook, Instagram .