Llanor Alleyne: Exploring Femininity
Artist Llanor Alleyne is known for her otherworldly collages composed of brightly colored organic shapes that twist and morph into visually striking, abstract florals. Inspired by contemporary art and literature, Llanor utilizes art as a tool for exploring female figurative presentation and the connection between women and the natural world.
Tell me about your background and where your creative journey began.
I was born in Barbados, but raised in New York starting age 8. As a loner kid growing up in Brooklyn and navigating a whole new country, I turned to drawing comics I found in the Sunday newspapers (Calvin and Hobbs, Heathcliff, etc.) as well as painting wonky tropical watercolor landscapes because I was terribly homesick. I eventually studied industrial design at one of the specialized high schools in New York with the intention of being an architect. I ended up studying creative writing and my career did and continues to some extent to be in journalism, but art never left me. When I lost my magazine editor’s job during the 2008 financial crisis, I finally had the time and headspace to pursue art in a more intentional and meaningful way.
How has your work shifted and evolved over time?
I don’t exactly remember when I came across the work of Romare Bearden — probably in my early teens — but I was immediately struck by the inventiveness of his art practice, and the unique possibilities that collage offered up in terms of creating a unique visual vocabulary made up of marks and cut outs that I have made and chosen. For a long time, I made collages comprised of found images, but because I travelled so much early in my journalism career and in general, I didn’t want to lug magazines and papers everywhere I went. Making my own paintings, drawings, photographs, etc, to tell the stories I wanted to in my work gave me a richer and deep reservoir of ideas to pull from. From those early comic drawings, my work has evolved to deep exploration of the feminine as I understand it, inspired by the books (fiction, memoirs, poetry, polemics, feminist theory) of Black women writers.
Describe your creative process and where you find inspiration for your work.
I have a lot of admiration for found collage, but it just doesn’t work for me as the source of my work. Over the past 10 years I have been making my own, mostly abstract paintings on mylar and paper and cutting these into the shapes I want for my work. The paintings themselves are inspired by abstractions of landscapes and shapes found in nature or just from my own imagination. They are freestyle and very rarely mapped out beforehand. The inspiration for the final work varies and depends greatly on where I am physically and mentally. The most recent work, Fugitive Ecologies, sprang from a move from Barbados (via a short stop in New York) to Tulsa, Oklahoma, one day before the pandemic lockdown took effect. I moved to a rather large and very empty loft with only a couple of suitcases and a backpack. I also had a number of abstract paintings I’d made in Barbados. It became a source of great comfort to use those abstractions to make the floral abstracts that make up that series, not only to ground myself in a familiar practiceat time of great anxiety but also to make a sort of garden for myself in what at that time was a truly barren place.
Which artists have impacted your work?
Romare Bearden has had the most serious impact because his work demonstrates the incredible extent and scale that we can take collage. I am also an admirer of Kara Walker, Wangechi Mutu and Kerry James Marshall because of their striking use of the figurative in their visual storytelling. But a lot of the imagery that comes to play in my work has been inspired by words, sometimes my own, but also Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Cheryl Clarke, Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, June Jordan, the list goes on and on. There is always something flourishing and gushing in their novels, poems, and theories. It is intense, vibrant, forceful, impactful and not always what it seems to be on first read or listen. There are layers and depths to the writings of these women, and in their own way, they are making collages too.
What does a typical day in the studio look like for you?
I often start with mark making after breakfast. I queue up podcasts or audiobooks that I have reserved for this time. I take deep pleasure in painting, but I also just love moving scissors around a piece of paper to see what emerges. This play often leads to the beginning of an idea that I can tackle in depth later or that I apply to a series I am working on in the moment. I like series because they show the shifts and evolutions of an idea across many works. The afternoon is often devoted to admin work (email inquiries, etc.) or gluing work that has been collaged but not made permanent. I also read up on what is happening in the art world or seek out books that introduce me to work I have not seen or experienced before.
How has the current pandemic impacted your work or studio practice?
The pandemic has inadvertently given me more time to make more work. I was working full time up until mid-August as an editor, but I was furloughed, so in between job interviews and art commissions, I have more time to work on my next series of work. I am painting more and thinking about ways to take my work in new directions while experimenting with materials that I have not worked with before, like acrylic pens and ink blocks.
What are your future goals and aspirations? I recently signed with the Leonard Tourne Gallery in New York, so I am focused on planning exhibitions and opportunities with the curator and director there. I am also having a lot of fun working as a freelance consultant with a branding agency on a few art and writing projects. It is the dovetailing of my creative writing and art practice that I’d been looking for in the past few years, and I am grateful that it has come in a moment when so much else seems uncertain.
Website:http://www.llanoralleyne.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/llapen/