Alexis Portilla

I’m a painter and printmaker now living in the west of Ireland. Before 2023 I was living and working solely in New York City. I completed my BFA at Pratt Institute and my MFA at Columbia University. My etchings are held in the collections of the New York Public Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The work has been inspired by so many things including improvisational Jazz and the city’s palimpsests. In New York, buildings are always being torn down, and when one comes down, the ghost of a staircase is left on a neighbor’s brick wall. City walls carry hundreds of posters pasted and ripped away from the same spots, then graffiti, weather and time on top. These surfaces hold layers of lives and stories that have been erased and rewritten, and I’ve been looking at them all my life. I am equally inspired by the architecture I see on my city walks. In the paintings, I build and scrape back surfaces the way the city does. In the etchings, plate, acid and press leave their own marks and wear. Every piece is an invitation to look closely at what has been covered up and left behind, and to find beauty in it. I hope people that see my work see the endless interpretation of it as I do.