Exhibit 'A' Gallery

at The Old Courthouse

On the Wild Side

Retracing old steps

An Exhibition by

Alison Critchlow

Saturday 19th October
to
Sunday 17th November

An exhibition of paintings, drawings and sketchbooks by Alison Critchlow investigating ideas about place and memory.
The work documents a series of creative journeys – revisiting places that are important to her.

On The Wild Side: Retracing Old Steps

An exhibition of paintings, drawings and sketch books by Alison Critchlow.

Documenting a series of creative journeys which retrace old steps in some of Britain’s wilder spaces, this is a first gathering of thoughts, notes, and paintings recording an ongoing process. It explores how landscapes affect us; their power over imagination, the very real threat to these areas in the 21st century and what Wallace Stegner termed ‘the geography of hope’*

I have been revisiting places which are important to me, in some cases going back after many years, exploring how landscape affects thinking and whether the physical reality measures up to the mind’s eye. My journeys so far have taken me to Ardnamurchan, Rannoch Moor, Haweswater and the Outer Hebrides. Some of these places I will be returning to in 2025, there is so much more to do there and a year has gone by too quickly.

This selection of work is from the windswept Atlantic shores of the Outer Hebrides – a mix of seascapes and a few ‘Light Night Waves’  which are the start of a new series of abstract paintings. I spent time in the Western Isles walking several beaches at night – these walks beside big waves gave rise to an exciting surge of ideas which are reverberating around my mind – they have a long way to run yet.

These lines from Norman MacCaig sum it up

‘…I felt the night

Inside my head, like the one outside it, fade

Till its last shadow swallowed its last shade

 

And into sight

Of inner as of outer eye there grew

Shapes into shape, colours becoming true’…

 

I have also included a large panel of small drawings made across a few weeks earlier this year at Haweswater – as low cloud and winter colour started to shift and turn into early spring. The quiet mystery of this place acts here as counterpoint to the rushing Hebridean seas.

I have put some sketchbooks in the glass cabinets, along with various drawings and thoughts.

My aim is to present a slice through my painting practice –  a dynamic and evolving process with a broad range of reference points that reach far beyond the studio walls.

These paintings are about the feeling and experience of moving through and being in particular places. They are also about the process of painting –  a rich mix of observation, memory, imagination and studio practice.

As well as a personal retracing of old steps (physically, mentally and artistically) this is also an enquiry into how we see and the tradition of landscape painting – about preconceptions and the lenses we see through. In places I have used memory as much as observation- sometimes stepping into the nostalgic and melodramatic rendering of heavy skies hanging over wild seas. This is the first of several shows which aim to share a seam of creative thought as pause for thought and discussion.

*The ‘geography of hope’ sums up the idea that landscapes, particularly wild places and wilderness, affect our thinking, change the way we imagine the world and provide hope. Stegner suggests that without the wilderness areas we loose ways of thinking as well as landscapes.

studio photo- Alison Critchlow (1)