Sami Ali says she makes time to paint every day.
As a full time physician in the emergency room at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, she refers to her daily practice of painting as “art therapy.” Prior to that, it was just an occasional hobby.
Ali’s series highlighting health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic gained national attention in 2022, consisting of 42 paintings and three sculptures.
“So early on in the pandemic, I just thought all of us were going to die, when everybody was on lockdown,” Ali said. “So there was like this, kind of immediacy, to paint. I don’t know why but I started painting my co-workers, maybe to memorialize them.”
Ali specializes in plein air painting, where she paints outdoors on-site, and primarily uses a palette knife in her work. She said it creates great textures in her landscapes.
She posts time-lapse videos on her social media capturing the moving skies and colors as she paints throughout Alaska — from Ugak Island to the Kodiak boat harbor — and almost always with her wheaten terrier, Bella, in tow.
“Plein air painting is really challenging, way more than studio painting in the sense that the light is constantly changing,” Ali said. “The reason to do it is because you want to capture the natural true colors of the light and shadow outdoors. But the light is constantly changing so quickly.”
The medium creates its own set of challenges, Ali said, like staying warm, the elements or making sure your paints don’t stiffen up. She tries to use those to her advantage, she said; rain and snow gives a nice texture to her paintings.
“So if it’s cloudy and the clouds are coming and going, or if you’re out there for more than a couple hours at a time, the light will just change so quickly,” she said. “So you have to just make decisions very quickly and try to capture a moment of what you’re seeing, rather than chasing the light.”
Ali has a show running through the month of September at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, called “Season of Change,” which features a series of 30 landscapes painted from the same point over a period of 13 months. The show will be on view through Sept. 29, with gallery hours Thursday through Sunday from 1-4 p.m.
Sam Davenport is a writer residing in Anchorage. She's a leo and a plant-person, and loves spending quality time with her dog, Aspen. She is a Real Housewives fan and has been called a Bravo historian.