Alison Elliott

About

Last year, Alison Elliott was awarded the Curwen Gallery Prize for Figurative Painting, for her striking, large scale paintings of animals.

This, her first solo exhibition with Curwen, features her bold paintings of well known thoroughbred horses such as Hernando and Lord of Men, their imposing large scale profiles of horses look out from their canvases. A life sized baby giraffe fills the wall floor to ceiling, stooping its long neck to fit inside the painting’s edge.

Yet Alison works also on the other end of this scale spectrum, and produces exquisite postcard sized miniatures, mostly of dogs. These capture the beauty and character of their model with precision and detail, and demonstrating the artist’s obvious natural affinity with animals.

Her paintings have an elegant simplicity, without distraction from busy backgrounds, her subjects sit alone within the canvas, with only a simple coloured backdrop. Taking her lead from the old masters, she paints in a classical style utilising tried and tested techniques in oils. Alison Elliott studied at Winchester School of Art and Newcastle Polytechnic.