As young as five, Alana drew. At age nine, she entered a national art contest and won second prize. The sponsor, Kellogg, was impressed by her talent.
The analytical and artistic shape of her life were influenced by her mother, a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, and her father, an engineer from Case Western Reserve. She excelled in life drawing in college and graduated with a degree in mathematics. Alana followed a career as Capital Project Manager directing the design and construction of buildings for Harvard University and the University of Texas. Often, she found time to create pastel portraits and pen and ink renderings. In 2007, Alana joined a group of artists painting en plein air in Italy. Soon after she retired and focused full time on her art.
In 2011 Alana completed a portrait workshop at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy, under the instruction of Maureen Hyde. In 2013, Scottsdale Artist’s School awarded her a scholarship where she attended a portrait workshop by Romel de la Torre. Later that year she completed a portrait workshop under the instruction of Michael Shane Neal. In a short period of time, she has received numerous awards, completed commissions, exhibited in galleries, had a solo show and exhibited in a two year six-museum tour. Her paintings reside with clients in Italy, Canada and the United States.
Much of her work is oil on linen. Her subjects are portraits, figurative, landscape and marine art. Primarily self-taught, her artwork displays remarkable draftsmanship with compositions intentionally leading the viewer. Harmony is developed with a limited palette creating a wide range of values and intensities. She terms her style “romantic realism.”
