Tess Felix Greene: Portraits in Beach Plastic

Tess Felix is an artist who likes to explore a wide range of mediums.  As a painter, she is interested in figurative and portrait work.  Her paintings became dimensional as she began picking up pieces of ocean washed plastic while walking her dog on Stinson Beach, Agate Beach and RCA Beach.  She explains, “After a storm the beaches are sometimes covered with a mosaic of plastic pieces. That started me thinking of the plastic as a palette of colors. I began to incorporate them in painted portraits, now I also do portraits made entirely of beach plastic.”  She uses color-gradation bits of plastic to create shadings and express emotion through her work.

“Doing this art form has opened my eyes to the problem of plastic garbage in the ocean,” Tess says,  “The problem is so huge it is almost incomprehensible.  This work has changed my awareness and made me take more responsibility in the choices I make.
But it is hard to avoid plastic, it is everywhere in our lives.  The constant production
of petroleum based products means there is no end of resource material for my work, and that our over use of plastic is threatening our world.”

Tess Felix is well known in the San Francisco Bay area for her professional work doing theatrical hair and make-up.  Her clients include San Francisco Opera, Shorenstein Broadway musicals, Hollywood movies being filmed in the Bay Area, films for HBO, commercials and private clients.  She also does special effects make-up and historical styling for plays or films set in a particular era.  She lives in Stinson Beach with her family.