Ilona Alves-Denes

My paintings dramatize small, isolated moments in nature. I focus on landscapes that play with size and color, confusing vast and expansive spaces with miniature sets, hinting at the sublime while also subverting it. There is an inherent strangeness in the worlds I build, color is exaggerated and theatrical, but my subjects are endlessly banal- pebbles strewn across a foreground, a broken branch near the edge of the road, or a field of overgrown weeds. Quiet moments become the focus of my work and take on the quality of an uncanny universe. An in-between place grounded in our everyday life, that is mirrored back to us as a strange and alternate space.

In a world that is dominated by monotony and struggle, my paintings connect us to the fluctuating environments that go unnoticed within our daily lives. My work asks us how we can connect to the wild within and around us.