If you are experiencing mental health-related distress or are worried about a loved one who may need crisis support, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
NEW BEDFORD — The eyes Alex Landry painted stopped you at the door. Thirty meters of empty lobby evaporated as her portrait’s piercing stare, which hung in unobstructed sightline of the New Bedford Art Museum’s front desk, confronted you. These were eyes made by the artist who didn’t want to be looked at, the friend who didn’t want you to worry, the daughter who didn’t want to stop dreaming.
Her own eyes shut for the last time on April 5, just past 3 a.m. The doctors at St. Luke’s Hospital emerged to tell her gathered friends that Alexandra Landry, 29, had died.
A talented observational painter, Landry took her own life one month before her graduation from UMass Dartmouth’s M.F.A. program. On May 12, the university awarded her a posthumous degree at its commencement. Later that month, her portrait at the art museum — where her work was centrally featured in an exhibit of emerging artists — was taken down.
The quiet closing of the exhibit and the graduates’ joyous cheers were a discordant coda to Landry’s time in New Bedford, where she had established herself as a fixture of the downtown art scene and the city itself.
Whether on a bench in the cool, midnight streets or on a stool among raucous friends in a crowded bar, Landry would lose herself in the blue sketchpad always tucked in her bag. That’s where Matt Warr, one of Landry’s close friends, would find her.
“She refused to smoke cigarettes while walking, so there were these specific spots she would sit and just observe,” said Warr. “I look outside my window and expect to see her still.”
Friends, classmates, and undergraduate students whom Landry instructed describe her as a beautiful, gentle soul who was quick with a laugh and never met a stranger.
Landry died after ingesting a chemical compound which several members of Congress are now seeking to ban for consumer sales.
Landry moved to New Bedford in 2019 from her native Lake Charles, Louisiana, when her best friend, Taylor Hickey, was beginning as an M.F.A. candidate at UMass Dartmouth. Landry, itching to adventure into the world, followed along.
Together they lived in a cottage by the water on New Bedford’s Southern Peninsula — a vacation house rented for cheap in the offseason — and slowly the pair came to love the peculiar but historic Massachusetts seaport they found.
That first winter, while Hickey completed studies in printmaking and painting, Landry took a job tending bar and spent her free time furiously painting. In between, she walked in the sand near their cottage to find softened splinters of sea glass. It was a simple habit to search for, and usually find, beauty all around her.
Slowly Landry became integrated into the city’s vibrant arts scene. By the year’s end, she was proud of a number of new paintings, including a serene, monochrome self-portrait rendered above a dizzyingly colorful background. It was submitted as part of a portfolio that gained her acceptance to UMass Dartmouth’s M.F.A. program.
In fall 2020, she began her graduate work. Soon, she was spending so much time in a studio overlooking Union Street that it was practically a residence. Anthony Fisher, one of her graduate advisers, recognized her talent and became a trusted confidante.
“We shared a plain-spokenness,” Fisher said, reminiscing about Landry while browsing through the paintings in her old studio. Untouched, Landry’s busy, swirling palettes dried in the corners. Other paintings-in-progress stacked against every wall.
While describing Landry, Fisher betrayed the honesty they shared. Her personality: “spunky and unpretentious,” he said. About her passing: “I’m pissed at her.”
Though Landry could be endlessly friendly and gregarious, friends like Warr and Hickey knew of her ongoing struggles with depression. When she was in the most pain, Landry would tell them to let her be. To not worry.
As she approached graduation for the first time, in 2022, Landry was consumed by waves of anxiety about publicly displaying her work, especially her thesis paintings. She retreated from classes and her friends, and couldn’t pull together enough credits to graduate. So, just months before graduation, she left the program.
How to talk to a friend about mental health
- Find out if the person is getting the care that they need and want — if not, connect them to help.
- Express your concern and support: “I’ve been worried about you. Can we talk about what you are experiencing? If not, who are you comfortable talking to?”
- Remind your friend that mental health problems can be treated.
- Treat people with with respect and empathy by listening and offering care.
Resources you can use
- Confidentially reach out to New Bedford’s Emergency Services Crisis Center 24/7 at 508-996-3154.
- Walk-in any time to the Community Behavioral Health Center at 965 Church St., New Bedford, MA 02745.
- Ask for advice and find more resources from the New Bedford Suicide Prevention Coalition or helphopesouthcoast.com.
- Call or text 988 for the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Information courtesy of Pam Bolarinho, Vice President of Acute Care Services at Child & Family Services, Inc. in New Bedford, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
In her time away, Landry stayed in New Bedford. She continued to bartend and paint. Her interest in observational scenes, elevating the simple moments, had sometimes clashed with the narrative style that she felt academic institutions valued. But with time off, she settled into her work again. And, slowly, she welcomed the support of friends.
“People say ‘reach out to your friends,’” said Hickey. “But it’s also up to the person to take that hand … to let walls down and to get the help you need and deserve.”
Landry rejoined the M.F.A. program in the fall 2022. She developed into “one of the best painters to come through the program” in recent memory, said Suzie Schireson, another of Landry’s advisers. Her mother, however, who declined to be interviewed for this story, said she thought that the paintings from New Bedford were darker than her daughter’s previous work, according to Fisher.
With multiple paintings in the New Bedford Art Museum and plans to continue showing her work at the Star Store gallery this summer, Landry was — and remains — one of the most prominent among New Bedford’s young cadre of artists. She lived in the center of the city’s art scene and produced among its strongest catalog of paintings.
“She was incredibly honest and observant,” said Schireson. “And not just in her paintings … but also of her world and colleagues.”
Landry wrote about her work: “I seek to paint spaces where the figure is absent from direct observation and instead focus on the changes and chaos of a space to carve out representations of human activity.”
In the M.F.A. thesis exhibition, Fisher said one painting was perhaps the best of the whole show. He liked it so much — her self-portrait through a reflection on a sticker-riddled mirror, where Landry was a shadow haunting her own work — that he bought the painting.
Recently, Hickey looked at another of Landry’s self-portraits for the first time since losing her. She commented on the “careful and tender approach” Landry took to painting her own image.
“She left so much of herself in her work,” Hickey said.
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
Roxanne Hepburn contributed reporting to this story. Email Roxanne at rhepburn@newbedfordlight.org
Editor’s note: This story was modified on Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023 to correct a quote from graduate adviser Anthony Fisher. The closing date of an exhibit featuring the artist’s work was also amended.
My sister who is also from New Bedford was a fixture of the downtown area just like this beautiful Artist in this article, My sister also died in 2021 from this chemical compound and they are not the only victims in this area alone who lost their lives to this chemical. This hit home for me like so many others who have suffered great loss.. I hope this story will put into action for Congress to pass this ban from consumers purchasing it or anything like this. What’s it going to take before these companies stop selling these products to more consumers before more lives are lost and families ruined across the Globe. It has affected Ms.Landrys family as it has personaly affected mine like so many others. Our deepest and greatest sympathies to the Landry family 🙏
I do believe if this compound that they took or didn’t have means to , they would find another way , this hits home for us as well it’s a mask in front of a smile
She was so talented. I don’t get it. May she rest in peace. I hope I see one of her paintings someday
How unbelievably sad…what a loss!