Gallowgate Artist Studios

Contact details

Website: alistairdickson.com
Email: alistair.dickson@outlook.com
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Statement

Intentions

Primarily to engage in the process of the work - planning, making, and then to arrive at solutions that will also engage and connect with the thoughts and the emotions of the audience/viewers. A search for expressing the individual but also the universal. Painting for me involves a process of action and reaction and creative decisions, they emerge resolved only after long processes of change. Once my own emotional battles and sacrifices have been put to one side or calmed through the process, it seems to be only then, through a sense of surrender that the work reaches a resolution. What I feel a finished work is alluding to, associated with, or is related to, I am sometimes able to conclude with a title, but sometimes not and they are left untitled, distinguished purely by their qualities and by the date completed. Most paintings are developed over months, some returned to after years.

In this age of information overload I aim to provide an experience that is spatial and simple but which also asks for time and contemplation from the viewer for associations to emerge and the experience of the work to be realised. To make something that will sit alongside nature in a complementary way. Work that can invite the viewer in, to stimulate and envelope like an environment, tiny or vast

Sources and Themes

Change, stillness, movement, impermanence, the poetic.
Nature, the elements, music, spirit, colour, the stuff of paint and other materials.
Archetypes, Icons, kitsch, nostalgia, humour.
Life experience – moment by moment, emotion, memory, dreams, reflection

Mediums

Oil and acrylic paint, mixed media, sometimes found objects/ installation.

History

Born in Glasgow, on leaving school, trained in Fine art (Honours degree) at Glasgow school of Art. Completed post graduate training as an Art Therapist. Worked part time in the communities of London and Glasgow – fields of mental health and learning difficulty. Trained as a lecturer in Further education worked in education support and teaching art. Ordained as a Buddhist order member, taught Dharma and meditation. Now fully trained and work part time as a counsellor. All the while, keeping up studio practise and having intermittent exhibitions, group and solo in London and Glasgow.