ALEENA WORFE Private Collection

About:

Aleena Worfe is an artist and educator currently based in San Antonio TX. 

She has a BA from the University of Houston and a Masters in Fine Art from the Union Institute-Vermont College in Montpelier, Vermont.  

Her media includes, sketching with charcoal, pencil, ink;

Painting with oil and acrylic

Collage; mixed media composed of recycled-"found objects" and digital art.

She combines figurative (representational) and abstract imagery in her work.

Artist Statement:

My work is influenced by the socio-political Surrealist movement. I respect their willingness to study psychological and social impacts of World War II while frequently using the beauty of art as a tool to purvey their opinions. 

Like the Surrealists, I enjoy combining images that represent a distortion of what we would typically see in the every-day world which was commonly done by visual artists of the Surrealist movement. 

Faith Wilding who is widely known for her contributions to progressive feminist art, suggested I familiarize myself with women connected to the Surrealist Art movement such as Leonora Carrington, Kay Sage, Remedios Varo and of course Frida Kahlo. These women were just a few of the women who made valuable social, political and artistic contributions to the movement but only

received minimal exposure or recognition at best with the exception of Frida Kahlo.

Part of my subject matter is mental illness. I model some of my pieces "loosely" on the faces of women who were patients in the Surrey Asylum located in the United Kingdom and the French "teaching" hospital La Salpitriere in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These women were treated barbarically, yet the institutions were well respected as models. The images of their countenance’ is intensely expressive of the sedation and inhumane treatment they were subjected to .