Meet the artist
Alley Kocinski is a third generation artist and has been creating throughout her whole life. She grew up in the Chicago suburbs before moving to northern Colorado to be closer to the nature that is so often at the heart of her work.
She paints using oils and gouache, both en plein air and in a studio setting. She has participated in exhibitions throughout the western US, multiple plein air events, and in 2025 she completed her first international artist residency.
Her work explores the power in slowing down and more deeply experiencing and appreciating our surroundings. Each brushstroke pursues a desire for stillness and wonder in an increasingly fast-paced, digital, and artificial world.
Gallery Representation
What is plein air?
The term “plein air” is a french phrase meaning “in open air”. When an artist creates en plein air, it means they are creating outdoors, on location.
Painting from life in nature provides a lot of unique challenges - quickly changing light and shadows, seeing paint colors differently in the sunshine or shade, and being impacted by the elements - heat, cold, rain, wind, even bugs.
In my opinion, these factors give plein air paintings a special, raw feeling. They’re probably not as perfect and polished as studio paintings. But they’ve seen the same view you see when you look at it - they were created there, impacted by the real elements there. That authenticity adds something beautifully intangible to the artwork.
As an artist, my favorite part of plein air painting is the opportunity to just sit and observe an environment for so long. You get to see things that you would miss if you were just passing through. You get to know that place deeply, see wildlife that only ventures out in the stillness, and form a connection between environment, artist, and artwork that can’t be recreated anywhere else.
I paint both plein air and in a studio setting, and the observations from my plein air work provide deeper insight into my studio work as well.
I do not use generative AI in any part of my creative process. Not in my references, not in my titles or words. I value the soul in human creativity.