Alice Toich

I find life fascinating. I am charmed by it each day. The way that surprises undulate through all spheres of this experience we call 'being alive' and manifest in the smallest of moments; a kind wink, a dying flower, warm rain, the amber glow of a street lamp in the night time. This is my stance; holding a paintbrush in my hand loaded with a glob of gooey, pigmented mud as my chosen mode of communication because I feel compelled to tell the stories of these small, often forgotten, idiosyncrasies. To bring the magic back to the mundane; to question contemporary behaviour or perhaps to expose the bizarre constructions in which we function as people, are reasons why I create. I am drawn to faces, and the minds that inhabit them. When painting, I am connecting with another being. I find clues; a secret held in the glisten of a small slippery shine at the corner of an eye, or a vulnerability softer and gentler than the curl of a mouth at the end of a smile. Perhaps it is because these things in life can't be spoken, that they chose to whisper through bristles, nibs and brushes.