Come along to Alison Russell's free exhibition from Wednesday 17 October to Sunday 4 November at the Cambridge Studio from 12pm to 5pm from Wednesday to Sunday. 

It's said that creativity is a combination of the subconscious mind and intuition. For Alison, delving into the subconscious mind is of great interest and my recent work has unintentionally, and quite naturally, developed in this way. She works intuitively (or consciously) when assessing and making decisions about the work, and subconsciously while creating it.

Alison's background is as a printmaker. It’s curious to her that she's abandoned the planned and controlled methods required for printmaking to pursue a love of drawing and creating spontaneously. Her fascination for texture and pattern, however, still dominates her work and may be attributed to earlier printmaking days.

The work in this show represents the two streams Alison has been working on most recently. She doesn’t source images or work from references. Like the surrealists in the 1920’s, she uses techniques as starting points to stimulate imagery from the subconscious mind to create pictorial worlds. The alchemy of combining ink, water and salt enables her to transform found shapes and structures. Continuous line drawing and doodling can encourage meandering thoughts from which to build.

The ‘conscious’ mind inevitably comes forth as decisions on composition and image development need to be made. Rotating the work is important and helps answer many questions as the eye is forced to see in another way. Which way is up? Alison says working like this allows numerous configurations in which the work can be viewed.  For a triptych there are 768 options both vertically and horizontally, and for a diptych there are 64 options. When stepping back and assessing, there are always questions - when is it finished, is it overdone, underdone? Intuition is the judge. 

Ambiguous themes or settings often reappear. Suggestions of underwater worlds, forests, biomorphic forms referencing nature’s patterns and textures hopefully evoke curiosity and wonder.

For more information, see the Cambridge Studio exhibition page.