Alison McCoy

Originally from Glasgow, now living in Devon, my paintings begin with an initial impression which can be anything from an indistinct memory pertaining to a place or experience from the past, to details from a family photograph or public archive.

I work with oil paint over acrylic as the materiality of the medium allows me to create a disturbance on the image surface.

Much like memory, my chosen images are worked over with further layers, sometimes enhancing, sometimes obscuring and sometimes merging with previous impressions.

By scraping back areas on the painting, previous versions of the images are revealed, damaged or removed, echoing our own remembering processes.
Ambiguity is introduced by balancing figurative and abstract to produce an impression of my subject rather than a complete representation.

The resulting painting may only afford a glimpse of the original subject but an echo of the original experience remains.

My aim is to connect to the viewer by triggering memories of their own past histories through recognition of an object, location or colour.