Her mixed-media paintings have been acclaimed for their symbolic imagery, rich colors, textures, and devotion to the written word.
Alexandra Eldridge was born in Mountainside, New Jersey and spent her childhood in a large Victorian house as one of seven children of Harry Devlin and Wende Devlin,[1] who wrote and illustrated 27 children's books and collaborated on two nationally syndicated comic strips: Fullhouse, which was based on the life of their busy household; and Raggmopp, which told the family's story through their dog's eyes.
Eldridge attended Ohio University, where she was in the Honors Cutler Program majoring in fine arts and creative writing and graduated summa cum laude.
In 1969, she married her art professor, Aethelred Eldridge, and settled into a 70-acre farm near Athens, Ohio that was based on the writings, teachings and philosophy of Romantic-era poet and painter William Blake.
She painted, ran the arts program, grew organic vegetables and became immersed in reading Blake's works.
She has also cited influences such as Carl Jung, the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and the teachings of Rumi.
[4] Eldridge has described the process as an attempt to seek the unknown, "to go deeply in to the heart of the mystery, to make the soul fly out of things.
“Each ladder came into being as a revelation to me, each offering a deeper understanding of self-exploration, of death, of rebirth, and of the existence of eternity.” [6] After spending three-weeks in India, she returned to Santa Fe where a friend was dying from a terminal illness.
“I came to see that this sensibility of the ‘aimless stroller’---vigilant, alert, with no destination, moving easily from the interior to the exterior worlds---was my sensibility.”[6] During her time in Paris, she was invited to paint a mural in the city’s 17th century Palace des Vosges.
For example, when she was staying in a medieval monastery on the Island of Elba off the coast of Italy, she mixed the beach’s black sand into the plaster of one painting.
Eldridge has had dozens of solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows throughout the United States and abroad, including New York, Paris, Belgrade and London.
Celebrity collectors include actors Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco and William Hurt who said, “there are two tides, one of light and another of muffling, suffocating...absence.
Eldridge acquired the plates from a friend, and once cleaned from 100 years of dust, they revealed images of fairy-like children from a Texas portrait studio from around 1900.
Eldridge partnered with London artist Predrag Pajdic on a project called "There Is No Such Thing As The End," which re-imagined those images on vintage Chinese scrolls through a palimpsest of painting, printing, collage and drawing.