The Escape Painting

With a blend of bold, bright and contrasting colours, Alpana Rai’s work, much like her background, is diverse, multi-layered and passionately creative. Immigrating to Melbourne from her native India more than a decade ago, Alpana Rai is a self-taught, abstract landscape artist who was raised under a rich tapestry of cultural influences, with an immense love for painting and artistic expression. As oppose to adopting a rigid, controlled technique, Alpana embraces a highly intuitive, spirited approach, grounded in emotional response. Combining memory and experience, and beginning with a desire to describe a specific situation, she continually seeks unique ways to translate her conceptualised scenescapes onto the canvas. Alpana utilises an expressive, rhythmic sense of movement and flow, whilst merging acrylics with mixed media to construct texture and form. Creating a series of paintings simultaneously with no particular end point in mind, allows each work to develop its own distinctive route and establish its history under more liberating means. Since 2019, Alpana Rai has exhibited extensively across the Melbourne metropolitan area and is a current member of the RedWest Creatives Co-op and the Melbourne and Victorian Artists Inc. In 2021, she gained certifications in Modern Art and Ideas and Post-war Abstract Painting with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. She is represented by The Toowomba Gallery , Queensland. Her work can be viewed online at Art Lovers Australia, Saatchi Arts, Singulart and Bluethumb Gallery.