MAKER: Wickford artist finds

Flexing Her Mussels

The shell-inspired oil paintings of Wickford artist Alexandra Jedrey

Beauty grows out of adversity, and that’s exactly what happened with Wickford-based oil painter Alexandra Jedrey. The pandemic proved a turning point for her art career. Faced with time to fill because of the shutdowns, she decided to stir up some proverbial lemonade and offer her paintings for sale for the first time. “It came from a completely horrible time, but something really great grew from it,” says Jedrey.

The first year, she launched her website and focused on online sales. For her second, she applied to be part of the Wickford Art Festival. When they accepted her, it was the realization of a childhood dream. “I grew up in the area. I’ve been going every year since I was little and it was always this far-fetched, glamorous thing. It’s kind of surreal to be participating in it now.”

Jedrey arrived at the University of New Hampshire an undeclared major, but when she took her first art class there, “I thought, yup, this is where I’m supposed to be.” She went on to get her master’s in education, becoming an art teacher when she returned to Rhode Island, but left her teaching career in 2021 to focus on her art full time.

Jedrey’s beautiful oil paintings of shells local to the shores of Rhode Island – filled with an ocean of seaworthy colors and textures, since her tool of choice is a pallet knife – dazzled art buyers at last year’s Wickford Art Festival. “I didn’t quite realize how high stakes it was,” she says of the festival’s impact on her art career. Her appearance led to booking more summer art festivals, as well as ongoing sales and direct commissions for long after, enough that she was able to quit her day job.

Shells are a recent focus for Jedrey. At first, her work hewed more traditional, doing portraits and then landscapes inspired by her

The shoreline palette informs Jedrey’s colorway