Alison Watt

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The cover of the exhibition catalogue from Fold

Alison Watt is a Scottish painter, born in Greenock in 1965.

Alison Watt graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1988. While still a student, she won the John Player Portrait Award and as a result was commissioned to paint a portrait of the Queen Mother. Her first works to become well known were dryly painted figurative canvases, often female nudes, in light filled interiors. An exhibition of her work entitled Fold in 1997 at Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery was the first introducing fabric alongside her models. This may have been inspired by the 19th Century painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and also suggestion a movement towards more abstract art. In 2000 she became the youngest artist to be offered a solo exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art with an exhibition called Shift, with 12 huge paintings featuring fabric alone. Reviewers at the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh suggest:

"These edged ever more towards the abstract yet had a strange, sensual quality suggestive of a human presence [or absence]."

Watt exhibited during the Edinburgh Festival 2004, installing a 12ft painting Still, in the memorial chapel of Old St Paul's Church and showing 6 new paintings at the Ingleby Gallery. Linen bound books were published to commemorate each exhibition. For Still, Alison Watt was awarded the 2005 ACE (Art+Christianity Enquiry) award for 'a Commissioned Artwork in Ecclesiastical Space' [1]. She is now working on her next project, Dark Light, supported by her Creative Scotland Award of 2004 from the Scottish Arts Council. In Summer 2005 she took part in the prestigious Glenfiddich residency and in January 2006, Watt took up her position as the 7th artist in residence at the National Gallery, London [2]. She will work within the gallery and from the collection for a period of two years until February 15, 2008. This will culminate in an exhibition in the Sunley Room and a publication in Spring 2008. She will be one of the youngest artists to present a solo exhibit at the gallery.