Strikingly, vibrantly alive—each one of Alexandra Houx Grounds’ hyper realistic paintings captures the viewer’s attention in both its immense scale and its meticulous detailing. Her paintings primarily feature women, from a close-up of female lips, adorned with crawling bugs, to a pop art rendition of Marilyn Monroe. At only 21-years-old, Alexandra is a part-time student at Columbia University and a full time artist, who has already had her own exhibition in NYC and been featured in numerous others.
Alexandra had been watching the TV show Gossip Girl in high school when a painting caught her attention: it was “Spectrum” by American photorealist artist, Richard Phillips, featuring a female portrait with distinct but overlapping layers that portrayed the woman’s face, each a different color. Inspired by his work, Alexandra began to paint her own pieces, and sent him a piece, to which he responded. Following that, Alexandra was able to work as his assistant. Working in a professional setting transformed Alexandra’s perception of art making—she says, “I never expected to ever want to be an artist but I just fell in love with it. I discovered this passion kind of randomly and it changed my life.”
Alexandra defines her work as hyper realistic pop art. The hyperrealism of her work allows Alexandra to draw us to her paintings, because anyone is able to immediately connect with and understand those elements of her work. Many of her pieces depict images of her closest friends, so Alexandra wants to be able to retain the unique stories they bring to her pieces through preserving the realism in their expressions and figures.
While Alexandra’s paintings are definitively hyper realistic, they are not copies of what the eye can see. Instead, Alexandra has subverted our expectations of reality by using her unique style to create a new realm of imagination and meaning—one existing only in her paintings. Turning her friend into an astronaut for her painting Lost in Space, Alexandra creates a character that reflects the perception of women in society. Set against a black background and subtly distorted with a 3D effect, the astronaut looks directly into our eyes with an expression that is weary yet strong. Alexandra explains that this painting represents the battle women are often combating: between being over-sexualized and seen as simply a sexy figure in society, and being able to ignore or counterbalance that in chasing after her own pursuits.
Alexandra’s work is dedicated to exploring female empowerment in a way that doesn’t try to undercut aspects of femininity. She discusses how in the pursuit of gender equality, many people have mistakenly associated with any feminine qualities as negative or downgrading. Alexandra instead believes that “if you want to embrace your sexuality, your femininity, and [that’s] what makes you feel empowered, then I want to highlight that as powerful.”
In her first solo exhibition, Delusions of the Wild, Alexandra featured pieces that highlighted unconventional beauty. Many of the paintings were close ups of a mouth, showing the intricacies of our mouth, tongue, and teeth apparatus—one she describes as “an intimate beauty that people look past.” Alexandra acknowledges that in the inception of her journey as an artist, many of her pieces were just “pretty portraits of people,” but as she continued to paint and become inspired by the people around her, she was able to distinguish “pretty” from “beauty.” Alexandra now sees her work as deeper reflections of the relationships she’s had and tries to evoke internalized understandings of the world that people don’t often explore.
Ultimately, Alexandra wants her female viewers to be proud of their female identities because, she says, “there is a lot of power that comes with it…it’s the most incredible thing ever!” Although the art world is male-dominated and can be, at times, intimidating, Alexandra has ultimately held onto her voice and her perspective, not allowing anyone to dictate what she should or shouldn’t paint. Instead, as Alexandra succinctly announces in her Instagram bio, “I paint the badass women of the future 💫”.
Learn more about Alexandra Houx Grounds on her website and Instagram.
