1. 10 Professional Artist JUNE+JULY 2013
artist SPOTLIGHT
Alexandra Pacula
A painter creates stirring narratives by capturing the movement of big city lights
A
lexandra Pacula’s life got a little brighter
20 years ago.
That’s when she and her family emigrated
from Krakow, Poland, to New York City.
The lights, sounds and overall energy
of America’s most densely populated city shocked the
14-year-old, who grew up in a postwar Communist state,
where advertisements didn’t line the streets because the
government owned most businesses. She remembers
Polish stores — including bars — closing soon after
sunset, leaving the streets dark and still.
Enter The City that Never Sleeps. The painter will never
forget her first dizzying walk through Manhattan’s streets
at night: The massive skyscrapers and sprawling billboards
eclipsed the dark sky. Taxicabs streamed by, many a horn
blaring, as street lamps beamed down on herds of people,
their movements punctuated by the flash of traffic signals.
The scene made her head ache.
“There was all of this light,” Pacula said, “so many colors,
different neon lights … so much chaos, and that chaos
can produce a sort of intoxicating feeling.”
That first experience of wonder would reveal itself a
decade later as the inspiration for a painting style that
seeks to capture the city’s energy and its effect on the
human body — she calls it “visual intoxication.” She
brushed that inspiration into one of her first canvases
shortly after graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree
from Montclair State University of New Jersey in 2006.
“It’s very entrancing and just pulls the viewer in and
makes them experience an elated feeling when they
look at the piece,” the 34-year-old said. “When you walk
around the city, you may feel the same way.”
Historically and technologically speaking, this feeling is
relatively new for mankind. Darkness cloaked big cities
until the early 1900s, when electric light began replacing
candles and petroleum lamps. Soon, big city lights
blocked out the stars. No longer governed by sunrise
and sunset, work schedules lengthened and nightlife
sprouted. With that, studies revealed that high levels
of electric light disrupt production of melatonin, which
regulates the body’s circadian rhythm.
“Now lights create their own landscape,” she said. Times
Square, with its 360-degree, stories-tall LED billboards, is
“so bright, it’s almost like daylight. It keeps you awake.”
Scene to Photo to Painting
Bathed in that bright light, those exhilarating scenes
are the basis for her paintings, which combine
impressionism, expressionism and photorealism. She
said she leaves her Brooklyn studio to pound the city
streets, a concept for a painting already brewing in her
head. She snaps thousands of photographs, usually until
her digital camera’s battery runs out or the memory card
fills up. Sharper images are mixed with blurry ones of
1 Diverse Rhythm, triptych, 2011, by Alexandra Pacula. Oil on canvas, 72” x 288”.
Copyright © 2011 Alexandra Pacula. Used by permission of the artist.
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BY JENNY ANDREASSON

2. www.professionalartistmag.com 11
2 Saturated Reflection, 2012, by Alexandra Pacula. Oil on canvas, 59” x 59”. 3 Alexandra Pacula with a work in progress.
Copyright © Alexandra Pacula. Used by permission of the artist.
the same scene in order to capture the right
effect but without sacrificing detail.
Back in her studio, she whittles her batch down
to two, three or four photos, pins them up
and sketches out the composition with some
paint and turpentine. Then she comes in with
thicker paint and starts the first layer, which is
spontaneous and fast. “I work really wet into
wet, paint the main, big area,” she said.
After the building, the sky and other large
objects are done, she lets the canvas dry,
then reaches in with smaller brush strokes to
capture the rhythms of the light — these are
more measured, calculated. She finishes with
a layer of glazing. The layers create depth, she
said, which is accented by the large scale of her
paintings. “It shows the energy — you really
are in the painting,” she said. “Being in the
city, being surrounded, getting that effect.”
In 2011, she created a 6-foot-by-24-foot
triptych of three New York neighborhoods
(Diverse Rhythm). The outer panels curve,
seemingly swallowing the viewer into the
scene. “It feels like you’re moving through
the space and moving through the city. I’m
creating sequences and a passage-of-time
effect in my work,” she said.
Sometimes her paintings are so big she has to improvise. She’s tied four
brushes together to make a 30-inch wide brush and used her whole body, in
one swift movement, to make one brush stroke to define a car or a building on
a 10-foot-wide painting. Sometimes she uses a whole tube of paint for a brush
stroke like that.
“I’ve had to run across my studio,” she said with a laugh. “That was really fun.”
Career Shines
Some recent achievements have put Pacula in the spotlight. Her work has been
included in exhibitions in the U.S., Russia, Spain, London and Paris. She was
awarded a fellowship in painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts
for 2010. She also completed a one-year residency at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art
Foundation in DUMBO and won the Saatchi Showdown Competition in 2008.
In January, she took part in Nocturnes, an exhibition of artists depicting night
scenes, at the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, New York City.
She credits her success to a cohesive body of work, networking, a strong online
presence and getting into good galleries. “I’m really painting more than ever,”
she said.
Now, wandering around New York City at night, camera in tow, the bright lights
continue to fascinate and guide Pacula. She can’t imagine life — or her career —
without them.
Visit AlexandraPacula.com for more on Pacula’s work. Read more about the National
Arts Club and the Nocturnes exhibition on Page 36. PA
Jenny Andreasson is the assistant editor of Professional Artist. She holds a
Bachelor of Arts in journalism from the University of Central Florida. Reach her
at JAndreasson@ProfessionalArtistMag.com
“It feels like you’re
moving through the space
and moving through the city.
I’m creating sequences and
a passage-of-time effect …
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