BIO
Rebecca Allan is a New York-based painter whose work examines the landscape and aspects of music. Rivers and watershed landscapes of the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, Virginia, and northern England have been her primary sites of investigation and expression for the past several years. Exhibiting nationally and abroad since 1985, her most recent solo exhibition was held at Upfront Gallery in Penrith, Cumbria, UK. Her work was recently included in Arbores Venerabiles at Wave Hill in the Bronx. Allan is also an accomplished botanical illustrator whose paintings of native plants collected during the Lewis and Clark expedition were shown at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Washington State. She recently published an article on the American painter Charles Burchfield in the March/April 2010 issue of Fine Art Connoisseur.
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, ethnobotany in the San Juan Islands with Dr. Ryan Drum, and botanical illustration with Louise Smith. She has been a fellow at the Centrum Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Dorland Mountain Art Colony in California. An esteemed teacher, lecturer, and museum educator for more than 25 years, Allan has taught painting, drawing, and art history at Purchase College (State University of New York), New York Botanical Garden, 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 also currently the Head of Education at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture in New York City.
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 re-imagining and challenging 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.
