Some words about Alexis' work by San Francisco writer David Farley:
“You don't have to reinvent painting.” So spoke my 3rd year painting professor and clear Ab-Ex orphan, back in 1993. I liked the abstract and the Abstract Expressionists, but I couldn't disagree more with that sentiment. As I have grown more familiar and fond of the work of Alexis Manheim, I feel more vindicated in this view all the time.
Informed as much by the staple jazz and blues playing in her studio as the worldly aperture of her camera, Alexis' paintings translate her primal expressions in the most fundamental visual language. The intrinsic necessity and sacred revel in her lines and colors harken to an artistic heritage as potently descended from the caves of Lascaux as from the hallowed halls of the Louvre.
Influenced by a visual family of stunning simplicity from Hiroshige to Hoffman to Hockney, Alexis' work carries on the best traditions of those greats while maintaining a vitality that transcends mere historical comfort zones. While it is wonderful for any artist, especially one working in abstraction, to be compared to Kandinsky or Klee, few modern aspirants to Abstract Expressionism's often misunderstood aesthetic carry the impact or sense of relevance that Alexis has achieved to evoke those two masters of abstraction.
Using little more than basic forms, their relationships in flux, figure ground fluidity, and liberating brazen color, Alexis is one of the exponentially rare makers that can relate compelling, visceral, and persistently engaging images within those simplest means. The genuinely talented artists bold enough to represent with such raw elements are nearly lost in a blur of post-modern assimilation and mixed- or multi-mediation. Products of longing for innovation, perhaps, but lacking the invention as pure discovery rife in Alexis' work.
The catalytic agitation and pictorially carnal perspectives evoke something being born or fading away. Not just the life, but the anatomy of imagery is revealed. References to alchemy in her pastels carry through not just a transmutation of material, but also of consciousness. The hard lines and soft vessels contain but do not diminish, and in fact, exclaim, the hued emotional charge, filtered through a rational necessity, just barely. Something is discovered, on both sides of the picture plane.
Alexis K. Manheim is based near San Francisco, California. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she graduated from Stanford University in 1997 with a BA in Studio Art as well as a BA in International Relations. In the following years, Alexis worked for many years at Bonhams & Butterfields Auctioneers in San Francisco as a staff photographer. She also co-founded and managed Madcapp Studios, a San Francisco based artist studio collective and event space where her studio was based. In 2002, she left her staff photography position to pursue her own artwork full time. Alexis is a active member of San Francisco Women Artists (SFWA) and Women's Caucus for Art (WCA). Her paintings can be found in numerous private collections from San Francisco to Stockholm.
—David Farley