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Living Paintings in Wonderland Dreams

Alexa Meade paints on the human body and three-dimensional spaces, creating the illusion that our reality is a two-dimensional painting. Alexa painted over 100 live models in the Wonderland Dreams exhibit during the year it was open on Fifth Avenue in NYC.

 “Awash with colorful brushstrokes, think of it as a Van Gogh — that is, if one of his paintings were brought to life . . . Lushly hypnotic.”

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Broadway x Alexa Meade

Alexa painted dozens of Broadway actors, producers, composers, and costume designers into the Wonderland Dreams exhibit. Many of them were interviewed about their experiences of becoming living art in features in Playbill, Broadway World, and Broadway News.

“They’re living canvases,” Meade said of her work. “What greater characters and performers to embody the painting than people who are really good at transforming themselves onstage?”

“When I saw myself with all the colors and textures pouring out of me, it felt like my heart had exploded outside of me, like all the fire and feeling inside myself had somehow landed on my skin and I had bloomed like a flower. She painted me on the outside how I feel on the inside, an explosion of color and feeling.”

- Gus Birney, Broadway Actor


Kolton Krouse, Broadway Actor

“As a dancer, my body paints a space similar to how an artist paints a canvas. And being here — actually being the canvas is wild.”

J Harrison Ghee, Broadway Actor

“Give into this moment, the beauty that comes from it, the transformation, the release. It is an opportunity to really free yourself, from the canvas point of view.”

Justin Sylvester, TODAY Show Host

“When Alexa offered to paint me, how could I say no? Now Ariana Grande and I finally have something in common!”

  • Eva Price, Tony Award-winning Producer
    "As a producer, I am rarely if ever 'the art' itself. She awakened something emotional, visceral and powerful within me."


    Nadia Brown, Broadway Actor
    "Because of the beautiful hues used on my skin blending into the sunset, I feel one with the sun, in fact I am her. She is me. She is the Sun. Being painted by Alexa felt simultaneously so soothing as well as so energetically and creatively stimulating while creating a work of art on my body."


    Helen Park, Broadway Composer
    "There’s something about the image of me stepping out of the small window and marveling at the colorful world outside, that makes me think of all the times in my life when I stepped outside of the safe and comfortable box I was in, into the world that’s risky yet exciting."


    Matthew Sims Jr., Broadway Actor
    "If I told someone I’d just stepped out of a comic book, they’d believe it. Being painted and going outside drew so much attention, but when I needed to I could just blend in with the background."


    Derek Klena, Broadway Actor
    "Alexa’s style and technique brilliantly camouflages her canvas and creates a piece that is always more than meets the eye. I feel similarly about life as an actor/performer. There’s always depth and complexity beneath the surface. Living, breathing art in motion."


    Tom Kitt, Tony Award-winning Composer
    "I actually wrote music. I wrote themes. I was feeling like a work of art. [My] being was art. [I was] being painted and turned into something new, and I didn’t know what it looked like, but the feeling of someone creating on you just inspired all of this. I started playing these patterns. They were sort of legato and then they became quicker and quicker, capturing the process of creating. I could feel Alexa’s process as I was literally being turned into art."


    Richie Ridge, Host at Broadway World
    "I started to feel a hypnotic relaxation and a freeing sensation throughout my body of any inhibitions and in my mind I had visuals of wild colors swirling through my imagination and when it was all done, and I saw myself in the mirror, I was truly astonished."


    Ilana Woldenberg, Journalist at Rolling Stone
    "Even though I was covered in paint, I felt a certain level of freedom that I've never felt before, to exist and play and move and be… unafraid to be different and stand out."

Famed Model and Photographer Ruby June Painted by Alexa Meade

After being painted by Alexa Meade, Ruby June photographed herself with a camera on a tripod and a remote control shutter release for a series of self-portraits in the Wonderland Dreams exhibit.