Gini Alter
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Gini Alter (September 28, 1950) is an American abstract painter. In particular, she is known for her oil pastels and acrylics on glass and her action paintings.
She was born in the USA where she received her first formal training and completed her studies which were subsequently perfected in Lebanon, Paris, and Saudi Arabia . Her eyes opened to the architecture and light of the Middle East and in Paris she studied rigorous traditional techniques with Matsoukis, at Atelier Matsoukis. Classical training of drawing and painting gives Gini the foundation for her abstract work.
She co-founded and taught at King's Court Project, a non-profit organization that helped inner city youth through art in Washington, DC. There she studied with Tom Nakashima as he painted next door at King's Court studios. The Japanese influence in Alter's work comes from working with Nakashima, her two exhibitions in Japan and her training in the Japanese healing art, Reiki. Moving the art studio to New York she had many shows on Varick Street in Soho. In New York she met Kiki Smith, Alex Katz and Nabil Nahas.
Alter studied the Japanese healing art, Reiki and became a Reiki master. She is a graduate of Alberto Villoldo's The Four Winds Healing the Light Body School, is a Shamanic Energy healer and teaches the Munay Ki rites of transformation. She has been initiated into an ancient and sacred body of knowledge. These purification processes shows up directly in the paintings as pure radiance.
[edit] Style and technique
Working on glass and acrylic glass Alter created an original luminous technique with oil pastels. Pouring plaster and wet paint on canvas to create modern frescos and then adding calligraphy to the surface that is a sacred mantra is another original technique. The mantra she uses for Japa (repetition) is Om Namah Shivaya.
[edit] Influences
Her paintings allude to artists as different as Jackson Pollock, Matisse and Giotto. As Italian Art critic Franco Solmi wrote "at first glance her works reveal her origins: "action painting" a lesson from Pollock a touch of kindness in which the ancient anger dissolves. This is the major component of an art based on values of chromatic sensibility founded on the most rigorous adherence to tonal relationships. Gini Alter images present themselves as a search for essential truth that is above and beyond existential tumults." (See this entire review at http://www.ginialterart.com/.)
The paintings reference Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism and Yoga. Her themes of harmony, balance and light are universal. Meditation is her painting and painting is her meditation.
