I want to create an ambitious new body of work to be displayed as an immersive painting sequence. This project has been building in my head for a long time and represents a huge leap forward creatively and in terms of engaging with a wider audience in new ways.
The proposed project builds on my existing ‘Swarm Series’- making a leap into new territory. Provisionally titled ‘What Larks!’, it explores the notion of ascending- not in a religious sense, rather the concept of uplift and the idea of hope. I will be using Vaughan Williams, ‘The Lark Ascending’ and George Meredith’s poem which inspired it as a start point. Other references will include:- American abstract painter Joan Mitchell (Grand Vallée series), Fra Angelico (close up study of his angel’s wings), vertical thresholds, paragliding manuals, Peter Lanyon, Phoebe Unwin, Rommi Smith’s recently recorded thoughts on The Lark Ascending, and Ruskin’s feather studies. The idea of a creative dialogue across time is central- and viewers will be invited into this visual conversation.
I aim to share my thinking and studio processes along the way and would like to offer informal art and slides chats-friendly and focused on art history (ranging from ancient to contemporary) these can evolve to take in whatever interests the group and the format can be shaped to suit.
The Funding will pay for:-
-2 day screen printing workshop
-Short research trip to Florence (to see Fra Angelico’s angels wings)
-Studio time experimenting with new processes/ formats
-Travel to/from Darlington for talks/discussions/workshops
-Materials
-Installation and workshop/ discussion group costs
The Creative exploration –
Using collage to deconstruct/ reconstruct elements of my practice, having marks exit the canvas- hanging elements/use of lighting/shadow play
Explore painting from music and poetry
Incorporating screen printed elements into paintings -a different register of marks to work against and explore repeated motifs that evolve or talk back- like music with a returning melody
Create immersive painting sequence for final display- I envisage exciting, colourful, romps of abstract passages of paint, lifting upwards- ascending. Like being inside a painting which has a volume control and a pulse!
My installation of paintings will inspire, uplift and bring creative sparks to all those who take a look. Large and strangely appealing- they will invite you to get your nose up close. Heavily textured paint and juicy colour have an allure- sparking curiosity that digital screen images do not- they exist in a physical, material, messy world. There is nothing more exciting than the feeling of being immersed in colour, movements and rhythms- standing in a charged space. I think of paintings as fuel for the soul. I use a personal ‘language of paint’ so that close up glossy drips will sit beside chalky dry charcoal lines, chunks of lumpy paint will bounce along beside delicate drifts and subtle veils of spray… they are part sumptuous indulgence and part resistance- more importantly they are fun. A reaction to the world we all live in and a deliberate move to make art which does not sit easily in words or on screens. I want to offer this experience to as many people as possible- no knowledge necessary, just an open mind- with arty chat and learning on offer for those who would like to dig deeper and join in discussion groups.
I am a contemporary painter, with two bodies of work underway currently which are unfolding at different timescales. The ‘Swarm Series’, painted in intense bursts, and a slower enquiry into landscape painting, focused on place, perception and memory. My proposal for the Dover Prize evolves from the Swarm Series.
These paintings are in a visual dialogue with Romanian/American artist Hedda Sterne (1910-2011). They are inspired by a set of abstract drawings she made in 1967, sparked by watching a swarm of insects. Sterne titled her series ‘Massacre’. I see her drawings as a reflection on how individuals can feel compelled to act as a collective, becoming a form much larger than themselves. She had witnessed horrific scenes during WW2 in Nazi Europe before escaping to New York in 1941. Her artistic inquiries are very pertinent for the here and now.
Like her, I am interested in the relationship between internal and external landscape, memory and human potential. I am fascinated by the language of paint and employ a range of marks as a type of vocabulary. Using thick slabs of paint beside delicate dots and lines; the texture and heft of the material, messy and rough, refined or pure, is the syntax of my paintings. I work on several pieces at once which allows a visual conversation to unfold with time as an active ingredient. I am interested in material thinking, and creative dialogues. This practice of moving between paintings sets up an arena for watching instinct and thought at work.
My exhibition ‘Suspended On Air’ in Newcastle (April-May 2025) showed a recent series of colourful works which move the theme into new territory. The dots and squiggles from the first swarm paintings morphing into tumbles and twists of colour- barrelling onwards, or sometimes slowing to become a density of individuals hanging in the air. The next phase is to make the imagined swarm ascend- all the tiny fragments caught in a huge updraft lifting upward in energetic, slightly crazy looping twists and leaps which viewers are invited to stand in amongst – an enquiry into hope and human potential.
I have a BA Hons Fine Art from Falmouth School of Art. In addition I studied for 3 years with Turps Art School – being unable to study for an MA at the time, due to being on my own with two kids, their postgraduate correspondence course provided the critical input of a masters degree.
Oppenheim John Downes Memorial Fund award in 2022- this funded me to make a series of 6 large paintings which were in dialogue with Hedda Sterne’s drawings from 1967- they became the start of The Swarm Series- three of them subsequently toured the UK in the Contemporary British painting Prize exhibition in 2024
Arts Council England DYCP grant in 2021- this funded a period of research and development focused on the work and ideas of Romanian American artist Hedda Sterne- it saw me working with mentors in the UK and the US and led to an invitation to visit the Hedda Sterne Foundation in New York where I was able to see her work first hand, read her notes and meet several of her friends, giving a real insight into her life and way of being.
Arts Council England emergency grant in 2020- awarded during the Covid pandemic.
I instigated and run (with some other artists) an annual open studios trail called ‘Around The Island Art Trail’ which takes place on the last 2 weekends in September. I live beside the Solway Firth in a tiny village which is very rural. We suffer from a lack of spaces to show contemporary art in this area and so we created a small open studio tour, an annual event which is now in its seventh year- it attracts large numbers and has a wonderful all inclusive feel with many visitors coming back every year and local people enjoying the art and the general buzz. This year we are going to have some ‘fringe’ events in the evenings as well! We are determined to generate an audience for contemporary art- and it’s starting to happen. This will be our seventh year.
I was commissioned by Cumberland Council last year to work on their Workington Art Trail- this project was to work with members of Cumbria Deaf Association to co-create a large painting for public display in the windows of the library throughout the winter. The second part of the commission was for me to make a large painting in response to the piece we made together- both paintings were displayed from November 2024-January 2025 and provided insight into the challenges faced by the Deaf community in Cumbria. The group chose to use their painting as an opportunity to be seen and have their voice heard.
I was also commissioned by HMP Haverigg in 2019 to create huge murals in one of the cell blocks at the jail. Working with a small group of the men there, I ran the art project as part of the education programme- teaching the group art history one morning a week and then putting into practice what we had just learnt by painting directly on the enormous walls. We painted a two storey cell block whilst learning about everything from colour theory to expressionism, JMW Turner to Sean Scully.
In 2018 I was commissioned to make a painting by Wordsworth Grasmere as a visual response to a passage in Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal. This was displayed as part of their ‘Weather Words’ exhibition at the Wordsworth Grasmere Museum. I co-curated this exhibition as well as teaching workshops with community groups as part of the wider AHRC funded project in collaboration with Leeds University.
Edinburgh Hospitals Trust in 1993- 2 oil paintings.
Wordsworth Trust Collection- have a small oil painting made in 2018 (gifted)- I made a whole body of work from Dove Cottage garden, (home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth in Grasmere), between 2017-19. This was part of a wider enquiry into Wordsworth’s creative practice, which saw me drawing from his manuscripts and getting to know the Wordsworth Grasmere art collection very well. The painting of mine now in the collection was made on one of several night painting sessions I had in the garden. It is titled ‘Frost at Midnight’ and was made on the spot. I chose to gift the painting, in acknowledgement of all their support for my project.
Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024- Exhibition catalogue
‘Behind the Scenery’ interview with Cumbria Arts and Culture Network- August 2024
Create magazine- Jan 2020 – ‘An Active State of Being’ article by Anna Souter about ‘Beating Time’ an exhibition by Alison Critchlow, Miranda Boulton, Sandra Beccarelli and Una D’Aragona
Artists Newsletter – Jan 2020 – Q and A with Jack Hutchinson
Interview, CRASSH website, University of Cambridge, for ‘Beating Time’ -2020
Interview on BBC website for ‘Around The Island Art Trail’ Sept.- 2020
Times Literary Supplement- painting reproduced on the cover – Oct 11th, 2019- one of many watercolour drawings I made in Dove Cottage garden at the Wordsworth Grasmere Museum.
BBC Radio Cumbria – The Arty Show guest – Feb. and Sept. 2019
‘Correspond’ – 2016 – Exhibition catalogue- essay by Derek Horton
I took up a residency at Cill Rialaig, Ireland in February 2023- an international residency programme which hosts several artists at a time to live and work in a restored famine village near Ballinskelligs, County Kerry.
I was artist in residence throughout February 2017 on the Isle of Iona- a small programme devised by John Maclean based at Lagandorain, at the north end of the island- I spent my time painting on the beach- recording the waves as they came in over one particular set of rocks across a month.
Email: alisoncritchlow@hotmail.com
Address: Linden House, Bowness-On-Solway, Wigton, Cumbria, CA7 5BH, GB
Local Authority: Cumberland
