The arts have always had a way of finding self-taught animal portrait painter Alexa Skorpack.
“I don’t remember when I wasn’t doing art,” Skorpack said.
Her earliest artistic creations were made with play dough when she was six-years-old. She has since moved on from that medium, now she uses acrylic paint, water colour, ink and charcoal.
Throughout her childhood, Skorpack’s love of art was nurtured and grew as she attended art camps where she found her passion for animal portraits.
“I like drawing something that can’t speak for itself and capturing something that can’t be spoken. I really like being a voice,” she said.
Skorpack tries to work on her art daily, regularly immersing herself in details of a painting until the early hours of the morning.
“Sometimes I’m up until 4 a.m., I lose track of time, I get so into it,” Skorpack said.
She begins a painting by finding a reference image and drawing a rough sketch.
“If I’m doing a drawing, I ink it down, I use the reference for very minute things, I do it in my own creative way, then I pick my colours, or I’ll leave it black and white,” she said.
For acrylic paintings, Skorpack will chose a reference image, draw it out, then once she is satisfied with the way the drawing looks, she will begin making the guidelines on a canvas, adding base colours and details layer upon layer.
Once the painting is nearly complete, Skorpack will add a hidden word which represents how she is feeling in the moment.
She added, “I’ve always done it, there’s always more to it. I like having a word in there because it makes people look more, they don’t just see the surface.”
For Skorpack, the best part of creating art is seeing people’s reaction once they see her work.
“I love making art for people, that’s what I absolutely love,” she said.
Painting is more than just a hobby for Skorpack, it’s an outlet that has comforted her during difficult times throughout her life.
“High school was rough, I wasn’t the smartest kid, I’m better at other things.
“I had a lot of anxiety and I didn’t know how to deal with it, so I was really bad at making friends. That’s when I really started getting into the painting,” she said.
“I really enveloped myself in it, it was such an amazing therapy for me, that’s how I got through high school, because it was hard being alone like that,” said Skorpack.
Upon graduation things didn’t get any easier.
Shortly after she realized that enrolling in nursing school wasn’t the right fit her uncle passed away from cancer, and her parents got divorced.
“I went through quite a depression, and art found me,” Skorpack said.
“I stopped for a little bit because everything hurt, I didn’t feel like doing anything,” she said.
However, Skorpack’s boyfriend encouraged her to pursue art once again, and she hasn’t stopped since.
“It didn’t feel like I had to do it, it didn’t feel like anyone was judging me, I didn’t have anxiety about it, if it sucked it only sucked to me, art is an amazing therapy,” she said.
Recently, Skorpack lost the majority of her art supplies and completed paintings due to a house fire in late December.
Despite that setback, Skorpack plans to continuing pursuing her artistic passion.
“I think quitting art would be really terrible, I think it would really break me for all the hardships I’ve been through. I think that would be it for me,” Skorpack said.
She added, “Without art I wouldn’t be the same person, and I wouldn’t have an outlet to put all these feelings into.”
