Artist Bio:
Andrea Tobin is a visual artist who splits her time between The Hudson Valley and NYC. Raised in California, Andrea moved to New York to attend Columbia University, where she discovered her love for painting.
An exhibition bringing together the work of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Francesco Clemente became an early catalyst, opening her eyes to the possibilities of scale, experimentation, and an intuitive approach to making art.
After graduating from Columbia, Tobin combined her passion for art and fashion by founding a handbag company. She created one-of-a-kind pieces by cutting apart her own large-scale abstract paintings and reconstructing them into something beautiful but practical. The process introduced an idea that would resurface years later in her studio practice: that an existing artwork could become the raw material for something entirely new.
Her experience building the collection also exposed the challenges of selling unique products online. Drawing on a secondary passion in technology and e-commerce, Tobin went on to co-found a software company that enabled brands to more efficiently sell and fulfill products across retail networks. She led the company through its acquisition in 2021.
Following the acquisition, Tobin returned her focus to painting and began experimenting with ways to transform the painted surface itself. That exploration ultimately led to her current body of work: handwoven compositions created by deconstructing and reconstructing her original abstract paintings.
Artist Statement:
Andrea gives new life to her original paintings by dismantling and reconstructing them into entirely new, tactile compositions.
Each work begins as an abstract painting created through movement, instinct, and energy. This part of the process is free and intuitive, allowing layers of color, gesture, and texture to build without a predetermined outcome.
Once the painting is complete, the process shifts from spontaneous to deliberate. Andrea cuts the canvas into strips by hand, then carefully arranges and weaves them back together. Sometimes the original sequence remains, while other times it is disrupted, rearranged, or combined with fragments from other paintings.
This balance between creative freedom and precise structure is at the heart of Andrea’s practice and reflects her background as a competitive tennis player. Much like tennis, her process moves between instinct and control, chaos and order. The energy and freedom of painting are balanced by the rhythm and discipline of cutting, weaving, and rebuilding.
The woven structure continues around the edges and corners of the canvas, transforming the painting into a dimensional object. As the viewer moves around the work, different layers of color, texture, and shadow emerge, allowing the piece to continually shift depending on perspective.
Through deconstruction and reconstruction, the original painting is given a new life. What begins as a single image becomes something more dimensional, complex, and tactile, with an energy entirely its own.