BIOGRAPHY
Alexandra Tyng (American, b. 1954, Rome, Italy) is a visual storyteller known for her oil paintings of people and aerial landscapes. Her work is representational with a strong sense of abstract form and a deep understanding of figure-ground relationships. She is comfortable working in several genres. Alex’s portraits often incorporate descriptive backgrounds and a uniquely figurative sensibility. In her non-commissioned figurative work, Alexandra suggests narratives through symbolism that appear as surreal events, overlapping time periods, and everyday objects with multiple meanings. Alex’s landscapes range from intimate views of particular places to large-scale aerial views of cities to the glacially carved land formations of coastal Maine.
Her work has received numerous national awards from institutions including Allied Artists of America, the Art Renewal Center, and the Portrait Society of America. Her work has been featured in such major art publications as ArtNews, American Arts Quarterly, PoetsArtists, Fine Art Connoisseur, American Art Collector, Plein Air Magazine, and The Art of the Portrait Journal. Alexandra’s aerial landscape Jet Streams was chosen as cover art for Carl and David Little’s recent book, Art of Acadia. Her painting The Letter A accompanied her essay in the Reader’s Guide companion to the 2022 facsimile edition of The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I Kahn, and was reprinted in The Pennsylvania Gazette.
Alexandra’s paintings reside in the permanent collections of several museums and public galleries in the U.S., The United Kingdom, and Estonia. Others have been shown at the Butler Institute of American Art, Lightner Museum, Woodmere Art Museum, and the Customs House Museum. Alex has had 15 solo shows, the most recent in December 2021 at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia; and she has participated in numerous group shows spanning five decades, notably FOCUS: Women in the Visual Arts at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, 1974; Inspiring Figures at the Butler Institute, 2010; and Women Painting Women: In Earnest at Texas A&M, 2013. Alexandra is represented by Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, ME, and gWatson Gallery in Stonington, ME.
