At eight years of age, Alice and her finger paint art were featured in an interest piece in her hometown’s local newspaper, 'The Barrie Examiner'. Alice loved taking art classes and programs throughout her youth, and went on to study art at Barrie North Collegiate, followed by studying with private tutors from England and China. While she has done some work in water colours, her greatest body of work is in acrylics.

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Alice is contemplating widening her scope into oil painting, a whole new, as yet, undiscovered world. While she has done some plein air painting, (several pieces were created in the beautiful areas throughout Victoria, British Columbia), Alice mostly works from her home studio in Oak Bay, not wanting to be limited to one genre or style of art. Amongst her larger body of abstract paintings are interspersed a few still-life's and landscapes. Leaning more towards expressionism than impressionism, Alice is always exploring different styles of painting through experimenting with thick and thin paints, different types of brush strokes, careful measured detail and big bold strokes.

 

In addition to her career in the employment services field, Alice is also a trained vocalist, Reiki Master/Teacher and author, published under her pen name, Lauren Van Kas. Alice’s husband Gerry and their son Christopher lived in Japan from 1991-1994 and had many opportunities to view Japanese artisans throughout the prefecture of Yamagata. During her time there, Alice worked primarily with oil pastels.

 

“What I work to capture in my paintings is the vividness of life. The shifting colours and tones of nature are so inspiring to me. While I live in Oak Bay, I travel throughout Vancouver Island and am awestruck at the changes that occur in the sky, clouds, trees and other foliage throughout the seasons and will stop to take a series of photographs. I am also fascinated by the phenomena of nebula and neutron stars and hope to do a series of abstracts in the future that capture my impressions. Most of the time when I sit down at my easel I have no idea what is going to unfold. I usually start with the colours I want to use that day and go from there. I have always admired the impressionists and have recently completed a piece called, “Lady Of Roses On The Moor” inspired by those artists."