The collaboration is very exciting but quite difficult to make the first move. This was partly because we have designed and imagined a project which could bounce backwards and forwards; however when I really started to think about it I was led back to the understanding of my practice which is that I am more likely to make eight paintings over eight weeks than one painting a week over the same period. I am also conscious of not remaking successful works from my MA show, although this is the logical starting point and springboard. So I began by making three new canvases and working on my ‘elephant’ sized paper. I’ve got really involved with the idea of stains and creating free flowing puddles which eventually stop and are captured on the surface. This links of course with the idea of trace, but also shorelines, puddles and a sense of environment. I have just acquired song lines and landscape and memory to read which I think mark a move towards a greater link with the environment..although not returning to earlier more illustrative and figurative works. So I began by making stains and puddles to fill backgrounds. The canvas surfaces have become all coloured whilst the nature of the paper means that the stains have watermarked quickly and create much crisper edges where the pigment dried. My visual material, which I wrote about on a previous blog, still needs to be expanded…however, I have selected some unbalanced images from beside the lake. The difference between these and figures in Trace Dance 1.1-1.8 is that I haven’t yet completely omitted the elements of clothing as I rather like the flow and movement created by the folds in the fabric. Instead I have reduced the level of description in each line to show a sense of the body and shape. In one piece the figures face each other, as though involved in a dance; in the other I have placed them behind each other on a diagonal. I intended for this to represent some sort of pursuit, introducing a sense of peril but also play. These figures currently appear quite ethereal; they are transitional pieces and drawings, although curiously are larger scale than the new canvases. My current plan is to stain over the figures so they appear inbetween, with the intention of trapping them on the surface corresponding with the sharp edges of the stains. The canvases should be painted in an even more reduced way, perhaps reengaging with the losing if some clothing/fabric to create partial trace figures.
Alexa Cox Studio 
Reblogged this on Rebecca Stoneham Music and commented:
The first entry for the collaboration blog – and I realise how difficult this is going to be! Alexa’s paintings are wonderful, capturing motion and narrative in a magical and fluid way. However, knowing where to start and which piece to focus upon as a springboard for the first piece is very difficult! But in the way that she comments that she is more likely to work on 8 pieces at the same time over 8 weeks, maybe I should consider a similar approach. I am a huge fan of motivic works, enjoying the pieces of composers such as Wagner and Elgar who write in very thematic ways. It could be an interesting approach to attach a motif to elements of the paintings and develop these into pieces as the paintings themselves develop.