Alison Mitchell STILL EVEN - STILL
Exhibition Dates June 28 - July 29 2018
Exhibition Opening July 7 at 2pm
Opening Speaker Hugo Shaw
Alison Mitchell is a visual artist based in regional South Australia.
Her work encompasses a broad range of materials – water colour, oils and sculpture but is consistent in always working directly from life. “ It is often some visual nuance that entices me to paint, a particular combination of colour, of light, or an unusual tonal contrast. It is the roundness and sheen of fruit, the compositional possibilities of a landscape or a particular twist or angle in a model’s body. It is seeing the world anew, with fresh eyes.”
“STILL EVEN – STILL has emerged, in part, from experiencing the exhibition ‘…the Dutch Golden Age, masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum’(AGNSW) last year. The unparalleled wealth, power and cultural confidence of 16th century Dutch society seems echoed in our own current global context. Great power, great wealth, but always at someone or something’s expense. Most resonant were the still life and interior paintings. Their ‘’tranquil scenes of domestic life and careful studies of fruit and flowers” emphasised the particularities of a secular materialism. Objects were important in and of themselves – and not just for the stories they told.
“My main focus, in the past few years, has been still life painting. I tend to paint objects that I am familiar with, that are embedded with memories and meaning, or are fresh and unfamiliar but have caught my eye. Often they have lost their original utilitarian functions and yet are ubiquitous, and they occur and reoccur throughout the works – it is their placement within the plane of the painting - the space between and the spaces within – that is beginning to have more resonance.”
Alison graduated from the University of Adelaide with a first class honours in Anthropology and this, along with studies in Asian art and decades of life drawing, informs her practice.
She lives with her husband Robert Hannaford on their property near Riverton SA and it is the fruit and produce of their garden that often becomes the subject of her work as well as regular ‘en plein air’ painting trips.
She has been a finalist in a number of art awards including the Portia Geach Memorial Portrait Prize, the Doug Moran Portrait Prize, the EMSLA, the Heysen Landscape Prize, the Whyalla and Tatiara art prizes and in the Fleurieu Art prizes, and exhibits regularly in and around Adelaide.
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Alison Mitchell 'Evening Meal' Oil on canvas
Alison Mitchell 'Ensemble in Blue White Yellow' Oil on board