ALYSSA FIELDS’ THE DREAMER’S POND IN OCTOBER

Graceful Glide, Oil on Canvas, 24" x 30"

Artist Alyssa Fields lived in Laguna Beach, California for two years studying painting and frequently photographing local ocean vistas, but it took visiting The Gathering Place in landlocked Tulsa for her to start painting scenes of water. Tulsans will get to see the results when her exhibit The Dreamer’s Pond opens at the Tulsa Artists’ Coalition Gallery Fri., Oct. 3 during the First Friday Art Walk. The opening will start at 6 p.m. and end at 9 p.m. at the TAC gallery on 9 E. Reconciliation Way.

Tulsans who have seen Fields paintings at Art in the Square, Mayfest, or numerous Tulsa galleries, likely remember her highly sensual paintings of female nudes depicted in scenes filled with flowers and fruit. She now brings her same eye for beauty, light, and color to The Dreamer’s Pond. Fields started painting her pond series when she was commissioned to do a painting of koi. “I felt such calm when I was painting it that when I finished, I craved more and I started building a little collection,” Fields said. Her next pond painting, I’ll Follow You Into the Dark, was a tribute to her grandparents. The painting depicts two swans, who like her grandparents, mated for life. Although her grandfather has dementia and requires constant care, her grandmother won’t let him live anywhere but home.

Golden Hour Flamingos, Oil on Canvas, 48" x 48"

Fields paints in oil, and the ten paintings in The Dreamer’s Pond range in size from 16 by 20 inches to four feet square. She said that her goal for the show is to make the viewers feel the same sense of quiet and calm looking at the paintings as she did when painting them. “I like to go to the Gathering Place and sit and look at the pond and think and reflect. I want people to feel the same way when they look at my paintings,” she said. Fields has a fascination with the intricate relationship between water and its inhabitants. She particularly appreciates how gracefully koi navigate swimming upstream, and one can practically feel their fins moving through the water when viewing her paintings.

Fields has her MFA from Laguna College of Art and her thesis project was painting still lifes. She grew up in Tulsa, graduated from Edison High School, and went to college at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. She had planned to earn a marketing degree, but one class in drawing hooked her on art. It was taught by Sylvia Nitti, a former TAC exhibitor. Fields graduated from NSU with a liberal arts degree and chose the Laguna College of Art for her graduate studies because of its emphasis on representational and figurative painting.

Let Go, Oil on Canvas, 24" x 30"

After earning her MFA, Fields had planned to stay in Laguna Beach until Covid hit. “The cost of living there was very expensive, and I thought if I’m going to have to stay at home, I may as well go home to Tulsa,” she said. The pandemic proved to have a silver lining for her because she rekindled a relationship with a former high school classmate, and they now have a beloved toddler.

The Dreamer’s Pond runs through Oct. 25. Fields will give an artist’s talk on Fri., Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. That evening TAC will be open from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Follow Alyssa Fields:

Website: alyssafieldsfineart.com

Facebook: @alyssafieldsart

Instagram: @afields.art