Permission and Connection: Peeling Back the Emotional Layers with Alexis Wild

Delve into the world of Yoni Art in Conversation with artist Alexis Wild. 

Alexis Wild is a London, Ontario based, mixed-media artist who specializes in bold, layered pieces with an emphasis on intuitive expression. Her works typically feature plaster or acrylic on canvas, with positive affirmations and poetry within her under painting in order to add depth to the piece.

Alexis Wild live painting

Alexis began her artistic career sporadically selling various pieces of her fine art, until she was given the opportunity to teach adult sexual health and education with ties to BDSM education. This venture led her to reflect on her  journey and she came to the conclusion that her gifts would be best suited in growing her artistic business, thus giving her more time to spend with family and those who matter most. 

“Somewhere along that path, I realized that I needed to kind of realign my priorities because [work] needs a lot of attention and care… at the top of that triangle has to be me and my family, then my work and helping other people.”

During this re-alignment,  Alexis realized that her gift of connecting people through education and art was the path she wanted to lead. 

“I always want to connect with people and help them see what they can do. And so I really think all of us go in our passion”

Through this realization, Alexis began to focus primarily in Fine Art paintings inspired by freedom of expression. This emphasis on expression is also represented in her other creative pursuits, like spoken word poetry and dance. 

“I am a painter … and I'm also a poet primarily in spoken word and I'm also a dancer because all of those things allow me to move my body when I'm doing them and that is really important to me because everything that I feel and express comes from my body and to be able to make a mess in all of those ways … I need to have a modality that allows me to be in the mess of human life because being human is creating and creating is being alive and I think we need those reminders that we are human people.”

Alexis Wild Original Art

These diverse modalities allow Alexis to express each emotion to the fullest extent possible, combining various mediums to achieve this effect.  She cited that through these artistic projects, she has been able to release the emotions held from previous traumas and subsequently heal more from them. 

“So when I'm dancing, I am expressing whatever emotions are in me at that time… I wasn't raised learning how to feel things. So sometimes we need to see somebody else feeling to realize, oh, oh, grief can look like that. Like you're allowed to be that emotional and it's okay.”

When prompted about if there are any specific artists that contribute or inspire her work, Alexis stated that she pulls inspiration from a lot of sources, but there are two role models in her life that instantly stick out. 

“I thought of two when you sent me that question before this interview and one of them is my friend, Jennifer Plourd. She is a beautiful Indigenous beading artist, but she's also a mum… so we get to explore what it looks like to be single moms who are artists who also have other things that we explore… and then the other person I thought of is like an Instagram artist, Sophie T. She's in the UK and she's just really…100 herself online which is weird. She's a weird person and that's always inspiring because it lets us feel permission to be weird.”

These themes of being messy and embracing the authenticity of the human condition is something that is continuous throughout both Alexis’ work and personal life. Two aspects that contribute heavily to how Alexis leads her life is permission and connection. 

“My two main tenants are always permission and connection. And connection, when I look at that as a word, is connection to ourselves, connection to each other, and connection to the world as a whole. And permission, of course, is...To be in my integrity, to be in alignment with that priority sequence, to be in alignment with my values. And so when I think about permission and connection as tenants for everything, that then means that I explore the body in place.”

It is not difficult to pick up on these themes throughout the various projects and endeavors Alexis has undertaken in her diverse experiences. One of her more current projects includes “Victim and Villain”, which is a two piece work within the larger “Stories: the people we are and the people we were” collection. 

“Through my work and through my life, it's very evident that I have been both a victim and I have been a villain. And I can still dip into both of those anytime, right? So can you. And sometimes we look at the other and we're like, here's this person and they're an abuser and that's it. Abuser with a period at the end and they're nothing else, right? But I would make a bet that that person's also been a victim.”

Alexis’ works seek to make the viewer feel and reflect on both themselves and their place in society. She creates visually complex works that strive to pull the same depth from the within the viewer. 

 “...I want to make art that you feel something and you do know what it is. And it's uncomfortable because you're looking at yourself presented on a wall…Discomfort is absolutely an objective of the piece, 100%”

While it is often overlooked, art has an intrinsic effect on emotional growth as it promotes activation in various neural pathways that are linked to emotional regulation and environmental adaptation. Engaging in the deeper aspects of life, such as art in any modality is a necessary and beneficial aspect of the human condition. 

Throughout the day-to-day hustle of life, one often forgets to slow down and process everything we have experienced. It is far too often that the societal expectation for productivity output far exceeds the realistic limit humans are capable of . As such, it is important to uplift art within the community and support your fellow artists. 

Alexis Wild can be found at www.alexiswild.com and @wildpermission on Instagram.