Alicia Galer

Alicia Galer is a freelance textile designer based in London. Her practice involves drawing in an expressionist manner from inspiring spaces and travels. With her drawings she extracts the marks and textures she has created to formulate more refined drawings and patterns.
 

 

Alicia Galers blog: http://blog.aliciagaler.com/

Alicia Galers technique of using ‘expressive lines’ is quite an appropriate metaphor for my project, as the theme is based on the ‘winter depression’ known as SAD. Perhaps I could use this idea of expressive lines by doing a quite sketch every day, to document my emotion at that time of day and weather – with the use of materials such as felt tips and oil pastels

The thing I find most interesting about Galers work is her technique of combining a mixture of materials within her work. As this process of drawing allows her to create a wider variety of tones and texture. This technique work particularly well with her use of natural forms, as it enables her to physically portray the contrast is colour and textures. For example, the felt tips allow her to create a smooth texture to the leaf, where the oil pastel create more of a rough texture with two tones displayed. Therefore, showing the theme of contrast within her work – such as bright vs neutral or smooth vs rough etc. I also find it interesting how Galer uses large areas of colour to break up the white negative space, to allow the plants to feel more crowded together, thus making it less two dimensional. This is further emphasised by her technique of overlapping her drawings, to demonstrate how the plants are growing over each other. 

This idea of layering is something that could benefit me within my work as in previous projects I have been known to create small line drawings which value space. So by adopting some of Alicia Galers techniques it could push me to try new or different mediums to my fine liner and pencil – such as pastels, paints or thick pens – thus combining techniques and layering imagery. Due to Alicias specialism in textiles she tends to use material as the canvas for her drawings – alongside collaging – has led me to think about the materials I may use within this project. Such as using coloured paper rather than traditional white, or using fabric rather than paper, or using natural material to emphasis the natural aspects of SAD.