BIO

Rebecca Allan is a New York-based painter whose work centers on the landscape and themes of music. Rivers and tributaries of the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and northern England, as well as the chaparral landscapes of southern California are the artist's primary sites of investigation and expression. Allan has been a Fellow at the Hermitage Artists Retreat (Florida), Centrum Foundation (Washington State), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Dorland Mountain Art Colony (California).

Exhibiting nationally and abroad for over 25 years, Allan's most recent solo exhibitions were presented at Ringling College of Art + Design/Longboat Key Center for the Arts, Seattle Art Museum (SAM) Gallery, 2/20 Gallery in New York City, John Davis Gallery in Hudson, New York, and Upfront Gallery in Penrith, England. In 2011, Allan completed Horizon Lines, a series of paintings based upon six watershed environments that were incorporated within the performance of a newly commissioned work by composer Laura Kaminsky, for the 2011 Seattle Chamber Society Summer Festival. Allan recently lectured in Russia as a guest artist at the St. Petersburg Academy of Art and Design. In 2010, she participated in an unusual performance/conversation, "Jazz Improvization and the Visual Impulse," with jazz saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom, pianist Gustavo Casenave, composer Marty Erlich, and painter Vicki Barranquet at the Philoctetes Center for the Study of Imagination. An avid writer, Allan recently published an article on the American painter Charles Burchfield in Fine Art Connoisseur.

Allan received her M.F.A. from Kent State University and B.A. from Allegheny College. She studied painting in Le Puy Notre Dame, France, with Richard Kleeman, ethnobotany in the San Juan Islands with Dr. Ryan Drum, and botanical illustration with Louise Smith. An esteemed educator for more than 25 years, Allan has taught painting, drawing, art history and writing at Purchase College (State University of New York), New York Botanical Garden, Wave Hill, Cornish College of the Arts, Gage Academy of Art, Allegheny College, 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 History, and Material Culture in New York City.