Using nature and landscape as her points of departure, abstract expressionist painter Alison Britton-Paterson creates light filled journeys into the places between what we see and what we feel. Through bold, evocative brush marks, sweeping charcoal or graphite lines and smudges and the use of palette knives, she weaves her texture to achieve a tactile surface which offers a timeless balance between the concealed and the exposed.

Although Britton-Paterson prepares for each piece by spending time out in the landscape with camera and sketchbook, the material she brings back to her studio is never a direct influence; rather, it feeds into the broader story of each composition. Many of the photographs are simply of shapes, colours or textures that draw her eye, and these become a part of the source for expressing her own emotional connection to the world.

Britton-Paterson describes her artwork as connecting to “a shared idea of the unrestricted self that still finds joy in a fleeting glimpse of light and shade. This takes form in its abstract nature, I try not to invoke emotions with representational imagery from my surrounding, but rather lead the viewer into their own.” For this reason she keeps her titles ambiguous and each work offers a reflection of the viewer’s own thought, inviting them to find their own meaning “Maybe they'll see something that I didn't even intend for them to see. I feel that's part of the beauty of art.”

Biography and work by Alison Britton-Paterson