Sculpture That Will Never Get Made, Oil on Gesso Board, 24 x 18cm 2020.
My painting practice taps into my inner world and personal experiences and memory. Narratives emerge as landscapes that are perhaps strange and unsettling worlds to the viewer where all seems not entirely at ease. They can be viewed as tragi-comic and quasi- philosophical in tone. I strive communicate a range of thoughts and emotions through the medium of painting.
What drives my work is my passion for paint and my desire to problem solve within the painting. I frequently return to motifs and imagery to reuse and rework them into other paintings. I focus on how imagery interacts with the intrinsic qualities of paint, how the paint material moves and how it can be played with. The quality of paint handling, although seemingly casual, is a result of repeated attempts at getting something 'right'
Excerpt from my recent press release for exhibition in 2025 Mudlarking.
Mudlark: A person who scavenges for usable debris in the mud of a river or harbour – New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary of Historical Principles (1993).
For Mudlarkers, each day a tidal river grants a glimpse of its contents. Objects revealed by the river tell a story of the city and its lived experience. The living and the dead brush up against each other with the ebb and flow of the tide. Past and present overlap as objects emerge – tiny lost and discarded things that can tell the greatest of stories.
I liken mudlarking to painting. Mudlarkers view the rivers as a place to disconnect, absorbing themselves in the act of searching along the shores. The studio is a place where I disconnect from life and absorb myself in the process of painting. Like the activity of mudlarking, I scavenge through paint on the canvas, sometimes scrubbing and destroying with the hope of revealing something. Over time strange narratives emerge from past experience and memory. The artist Martin Kippenberger said ‘Embrace your past…that’s where you are going to find images, material’. My memories are like tributaries that flow into a river. Like a river, memories wind in loops and diversions. Memories, much like a river’s source, can be located in unexpected places. I feel like I am searching the shores of a river when I am painting – like a mudlarker seeking gems, hoping to find treasures in the mud – Alison Pilkington.
My work has been included in key international painting exhibitions including the Marmite Painting Prize London , and the BEEP international painting Biennial Swansea as well as part of international private and public collections in Ireland OPW, UCD, Bank of Ireland, Wexford Co.Council,and in private collections in Ireland The UK the USA and Europe.
What drives my work is my passion for paint and my desire to problem solve within the painting. I frequently return to motifs and imagery to reuse and rework them into other paintings. I focus on how imagery interacts with the intrinsic qualities of paint, how the paint material moves and how it can be played with. The quality of paint handling, although seemingly casual, is a result of repeated attempts at getting something 'right'
Excerpt from my recent press release for exhibition in 2025 Mudlarking.
Mudlark: A person who scavenges for usable debris in the mud of a river or harbour – New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary of Historical Principles (1993).
For Mudlarkers, each day a tidal river grants a glimpse of its contents. Objects revealed by the river tell a story of the city and its lived experience. The living and the dead brush up against each other with the ebb and flow of the tide. Past and present overlap as objects emerge – tiny lost and discarded things that can tell the greatest of stories.
I liken mudlarking to painting. Mudlarkers view the rivers as a place to disconnect, absorbing themselves in the act of searching along the shores. The studio is a place where I disconnect from life and absorb myself in the process of painting. Like the activity of mudlarking, I scavenge through paint on the canvas, sometimes scrubbing and destroying with the hope of revealing something. Over time strange narratives emerge from past experience and memory. The artist Martin Kippenberger said ‘Embrace your past…that’s where you are going to find images, material’. My memories are like tributaries that flow into a river. Like a river, memories wind in loops and diversions. Memories, much like a river’s source, can be located in unexpected places. I feel like I am searching the shores of a river when I am painting – like a mudlarker seeking gems, hoping to find treasures in the mud – Alison Pilkington.
My work has been included in key international painting exhibitions including the Marmite Painting Prize London , and the BEEP international painting Biennial Swansea as well as part of international private and public collections in Ireland OPW, UCD, Bank of Ireland, Wexford Co.Council,and in private collections in Ireland The UK the USA and Europe.