Alison Dunlop
I don’t find myself painting ‘from’ nature, from a specific view or moment, but am trying, through the marks my brush can coax from water and pigment and with line, colour, movement and form, to ‘tune into’ and distil the energy of the constant change within this environment. I’m also trying to grasp meaning in what I see, to impose my own order on its chaos, in the hope of exploring the essence of what it is that resonates so loudly for me in this place.
Born in Canada, Alison began her studies there before continuing in France and Britain. In 1982, she came to Scotland to undertake postgraduate studies at Edinburgh College of Art, and has since then made Scotland her home.
Twice the recipient of the Elizabeth T Greenshields Foundation Scholarship, she was short-listed several times for the Noble Grossart Painting Prize and received the Alexander Graham Munro Award from the RSW in 1997 and the John Gray Prize in 2007. Most recently, she received the Walter Scott Award at the RSW’s Annual Open Exhibition in November 2018, in Edinburgh.
Her oils and watercolours are widely held in both public and private collections throughout the UK and Canada.