Rebecca Allan

Rebecca Allan is a New York-based visual artist known for her richly layered and chromatically nuanced abstract paintings, investigating watershed environments, gardens and landscapes. Bringing together her expertise in art and horticulture, in 2018 Allan established Painterly Gardens, a firm specializing in sustainable garden design.

Exhibiting in the United States and abroad for over 25 years, Allan has been represented in 40 solo, and more than 25 group exhibitions, nationally and abroad. Her work is represented in the U.S. Art-in-Embassies Program with a recent acquisition for the permanent collection of the new U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway. She is also represented in the Bronx Artist Documentary Project, the first photographic record of visual artists in the borough.

Allan's most recent solo exhibitions were presented at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; Raft of Sanity, Buffalo, NY; David Richard Gallery, New York/Santa Fe; Anna Kaplan Contemporary, Buffalo, NY; Rockefeller Brothers Fund, New York; Meredith Ward Fine Art, New York; The College of Saint Benedict, Saint John, MN; Doane University, Lincoln, NE; Marsh Gallery, Indiana-Purdue University at Indianapolis, IN; Hudson Opera House, Hudson, NY; Dryfoos Gallery, Kean University, NJ; and the Tippetts Gallery, Utah State University. Her 2011 exhibition, Horizon Lines, at Seattle Art Museum Gallery was embedded within a performance of chamber music and film, commissioned by the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, and created in collaboration with composer Laura Kaminsky and filmmaker John Feldman.

A dedicated advocate of land conservation, Allan was appointed to the board of the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust. In 2018, she was an artist-in-residence in the Provincetown Dune Shack program, and in winter 2015, a visiting artist at Lebanese American University in Beirut. In 2009, Allan was the first visual artist to have a residency and solo exhibition, titled "Watershed," at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in Millbrook, New York, during which she presented a joint lecture with ecologist Dr. David Strayer. Allan continues to participate as an advisor for the Cannoo Hills Creative Arts Residency at the institute.

Since 1993, Allan has been the recipient of artist’s residencies at: The Dune Shacks of Peaked Hill Bars in Provincetown; The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France; The Burchfield Penney Art Center/University at Buffalo; The Hermitage Artists Retreat, Englewood, Florida; Centrum Foundation, Port Townsend, WA; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, VA; and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, Temecula, CA.

As a critic and writer for publications including The Brooklyn Rail, Art & Antiques, Fine Art Connoisseur, hyperallergic.com, and artcritical.com. Rebecca Allan has written on artists, including: Fanny Sanin, Sean Scully, Judy Chicago, Marcia Marcus, Dorothea Rockburne, Louise Fishman, and Robert Berlind.

In Conversation with Friday Arts

Friday Arts

Tell us about your practice and process.

Rebecca Allan

My paintings are rooted in the dramatic cycles of nature as well as a deep curiosity about science, and the forces underlying what we observe on the surface of things. My working process involves drawing, mixing pigments and layering color over time—in response to the environment, and to observed and felt experience. As a professional gardener, I also draw directly from the experiences of pruning, cultivating, planting and caring for trees and plants.

What themes/ideas do you find yourself continuing to return to over time?

Cultivation, Growth, Harvest, Decay, Death and Regeneration of the land.

How do you think about place in relation to your work?

My work attempts to express an equivalent, in a painterly language, to the atmospheres, geologies, ecologies and histories of particular places, many of them associated with gardens, quarries or wildlands. These include places that I've lived in or travelled to for my work in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and southeastern Kentucky, nurseries gardens in the United States, France and the UK.

How you approach the natural world in this moment of climate disruption?

As a professional gardener, I draw directly from the experiences of pruning, cultivating, planting and caring for trees and plants. I also serve as a board member for the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust. This brings me into direct contact and observation of the consequences of climate change. More importantly though, by attending in simple ways to the care of our environments, we demonstrate ways to preserve it for future generations.

Are there artists who you think your work is in conversation with?

I work within a transcendental American landscape tradition that includes painters such as Charles Burchfield, Joan Mitchell, and Neil Welliver but I also draw upon the works of Renaissance masters such as Giovanni di Paola and Pieter Breughel in my desire to invent my own cosmological landscapes. These are paintings that attempt to simultaneously show intimate details as well as far distant views of the natural world.

What are your thoughts on the role of art and artists today, at this particular moment in time?

I see the work of artists as unchanged throughout time. Our work serves as a conduit to knowledge, understanding and empathy for other people and our environment.