BIOGRAPHY
Rebecca Allan is a New York-based painter whose work encompasses the landscape, the figure, and themes of music. Rivers and watershed landscapes of the Northeast, the Pacific Northwest, and the Lake District of England have been primary sites of investigation and expression. Exhibiting since 1985, her most recent exhibition, Painting Music, was held at Gallery 2/20 in Chelsea. Her work was also included in the exhibition, Arbores Venerabiles at Wave Hill. Allan is also an accomplished botanical illustrator whose paintings of native plants collected during the Lewis and Clark expedition were exhibited at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Washington State.
Allan received her MFA from Kent State University and BA from Allegheny College. She studied painting in Le Puy Notre Dame, France, with Richard Kleeman, and ethnobotany in the San Juan Islands with botanist Dr. Ryan Drum. She has been a fellow at Centrum Foundation in Washington, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Dorland Mountain Art Colony in California. An esteemed and dedicated teacher, lecturer, and museum educator for over 20 years, Allan has taught painting, drawing, and art history at Purchase College (State University of New York), The New York Botanical Garden, Cornish College of the Arts, Gage Academy of Art, Allegheny College, The Heritage Institute at Antioch University, Seattle Art Museum, and Frye Art Museum. From 1998 to 2003 Allan was an artist-in-education and teacher- trainer with the Washington State Arts Commission. Allan is currently the Head of Education at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture.
STATEMENT
On Painting: Painting is a process of inquiry and reconciliation — of bringing together divergent and complex experiences, clarifying and transforming them. To paint is to be deeply engaged in the present physical world, while contemplating the work of our predecessors.
For the past several years I have been making paintings based upon watershed and coastal landscapes of the Pacific Northwest and Atlantic Northeast. Rivers and their tributaries are especially powerful to me because they encompass our remaining wilderness, yet also give evidence of its alteration from human activity.
My landscape paintings are derived from my observation of water and weather as carriers of the transformative power of nature. My interest in the way water makes contact with its surroundings has led me to contemplate the spatial and geologic changes that occur over time.
My tondos and tondinos (round canvases) suggest an historical link to the Renaissance; their curved forms offer a metaphor for the ways in which water actually carves through space, re-shaping the land. The tondo also creates a kind of centrifugal force that echoes the experience of awe.
Being in or near river water is similar to the act of painting. Just as water can destabilize and submerge, painting is a process that alternates between uncertainty (imbalance) and conviction, until hopefully, the work arrives at a dynamic, often unpredictable resolution.
On Drawing: Drawing from life is essential aspect of developing mastery as a painter. I draw in order to internalize the underlying structures of the natural world so that my abstract works have authenticity. I work directly from the landscape, the model, and from plant specimens found in beloved gardens such as Wave Hill and the New York Botanical Garden.
