Candice Alexander is one of Southwest Louisiana’s most collected artists and a workaholic. In fact, the small, wiry, 40-something who somehow manages to buzz with energy and exude a certain caliber of cool, all at the same time, is proud of her work ethic, laboring at times until the early morning hours.

“I can do that for a few nights and then I have to get some rest,” she said.

Few people know that she missed no school days in 12 years. If that’s not a testament to her diligence, then take a look around her studio. It is chock-a-block with art that pleases a range of tastes at all price points, canvases, prints and assemblages stacked against one another here, hung there, leaning against a work table, squeezed into a few inches of space that remains. The atmosphere is down-to-earth, largely due to her use of live-edge wood and the subject matter, inspired by nature.  Some of the customers come in, in search of something in particular or to pick up a commissioned piece. Others explore. There is no rush.

She makes no bones about being market driven, but being prolific and hardworking does not account for her success. A woman that can turn a couple of cockroaches into a thing of beauty – it was a commissioned piece – is gifted. She makes possums and love bugs look fetching as well.

It’s hard to believe that the McNeese University visual arts graduate who studied printmaking and portraiture at the University of New Mexico in Taos once doubted her ability to make a living as an artist in Lake Charles, and was nudged by family to get a good-paying  job, one that offers benefits like insurance.

“I changed my attitude about living here, and as soon as I did that, I put myself out there and things opened up for me,” she was quoted as saying in a 2008 American Press article.

She has no memory of a time when she was not producing art.  Born in the rural community of Hathaway, there were no art classes. 4-H art projects and competitions were her training ground.

“I was making these necklaces out of clay when I was young and would set up my table next to my grandmother’s who did knitting. I found the notebook I kept the other day. I’d draw the necklace bead with the colors I’d use and record when the necklace sold and for how much.”

Among the many treasures in the studio is a box of her early art. Each piece was dated and preserved by her mother.

“This could probably be considered my first assemblage piece,” she said, picking up the top piece and identifying it as an astronaut, a reminder she wanted to be one when she was a kid. The next piece was produced when she was 12, another assemblage, this one about five-by-seven inches that depicted a Louisiana crawfish boil. The bag was depicted with a small, one-inch by one-inch piece cut from an actual crawfish bag. (Her family had a crawfish farm.) The pot was created with a gum wrapper.

In 2009, American Press design editor Donna Price did a story about “the fleur de lis” explosion. At the time, Alexander had been exploring the motif “in a big way” and had produced more than 130 “Worlds Within Series” that began with a fleur de lis from an ancient Florentine gravesite. Every time she hung or painted a fleur de lis, it would sell. They still do.

In 2010, the year the city named her Artist of the Year, the American Press wrote about Alexander’s “Sixteen North” series, inspired by Japanese tea gardens.

Alexander defines art as something that makes another person feel something.

“It’s a way to relate a story that subconsciously they may not be aware of,” she said. “Whether you design houses, make cabinets. landscape or you’re a mechanic, there is art to that,” she said.

She moved her art studio downtown from Central School in 2012, did a special commission for Keith Urban in 2013, and has been in the news for donating art to raise money for numerous causes. In 2015, the American Press ran a photograph of the mural that was on the side of her studio, “The Tree of Life,” now covered with white paint because the building owner said the blank wall would be more conducive to selling the property.

In 2020, Hurricane Laura busted the windows of her studio and sent her art flying across town. The artist who was always producing, producing, producing stopped producing.

‘I think I stared into space for nine days,” she said. Then she started the Hurricane Series.

Whether a person considers himself an artist or not, Alexander believes that a creative pursuit can often be healing.

If she didn’t make a living selling her art, she said she would probably live off the land. She has no problem with the new Artificial Intelligence art apps, saying that it still leaves room for creativity, picking up an assemblage piece that demonstrates her point, and she doesn’t see a future in which she doesn’t travel, collect objects she finds along the way and make art.