“Le Petite Bistro, Rhinebeck, NY”, oil on canvas

Alix Hallman Travis

Bragg Hollow Studio, 15 Center Street, Rhinebeck 12572 | 845-372-3840 | Not handicap Accessible
alixhtravis.com | travisalix@yahoo.com

Artist Bio

Visitors to the Alix Hallman Travis studio often make the same comment:  “Your work is so happy”.  It is true–Alix is a happy person and tends to see the world through yellow, red, pink glasses.  While it is difficult to make the color yellow express sadness, depression or melancholy Alix seems to look for occasions, expected and unexpected, to use the many varieties of “bright” to make her work dance across the canvas.

Travis draws her subject matter from her immediate surroundings, often so ordinary a viewer may not have noticed it at the end of a branch or peeking up from the dead grass of an early spring woods.  Her painting mediums and tools change with the passage of the seasons. Spring and summer’s warm weather propels her outside to paint alla prima, en plein air using brushes with watercolor.  In the fall she moves into her studio to sculpt oil paints with the palette knife, often using the watercolor paintings from past summers to influence, expand and inspire the subject matter of the new paintings.  

Alix is not interested in recreating a faithful record of what is before her and does not take photographs, instead she depends on the earlier watercolor paintings, her imagination and memory to create the fanciful compositions that reflect the mood and aura of a particular area or moment.

The brightest colors running the gamut from the red, orange to green and sunny day blues, will be found in the works of the figure, landscape or a memory, of the works hanging in this exhibition.  All will make you smile.

Travis began her art education at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Ohio followed by study at The Art Students League of New York, where she was awarded the Fantasy Fountain Fund Scholarship Award, a merit award for study abroad.  She has earned signature status in the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society, has exhibited in galleries in the Eastern United States, and has been juried into national and international exhibitions.