Alison Philp
Alison Philp is a Scottish artist whose practice moves between painting, drawing, and writing. At the centre of her practice is a belief that the act of making is itself a form of knowledge and that sustained attention to the natural world, pursued through mark-making over time, produces something that cannot be arrived at any other way.
Often beginning from close observation of gardens or forest edges, her drawings evolve as traces of time spent looking, thinking, and reworking; records of a prolonged encounter. Watercolour is used both spontaneously and accumulatively, building soft, transparent layers that hold a history of making.
Painting is a slow conversation with material in which ambiguity and imperfection become essential. Writing is also integral to her practice, sharing the quality of attention, slow, repeated, sitting with uncertainty until something true emerges.
Lived Experience
I live and work in North Fife, Scotland, where the garden and the surrounding landscape are central to my practice. I work directly from observation, outside when the weather allows, and my subjects are most often the plants and edges of the natural world close to where I live.
I came to my current practice through a long engagement with both visual art and writing; the two have always been inseparable for me. I completed my MFA at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in 2018 and have continued to develop a practice that moves slowly and deliberately, built around sustained looking and the belief that attention itself is a form of care.
I am also a voluntary exhibition coordinator for the Art and Nature Collective, a Dundee-based CIC, which keeps me connected to a community of artists working at the intersection of art and the natural world.
EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS
Oct – Nov 2024 Introduction to Permaculture For Artists Design Certificate (awarded by Permaculture Association, www.permaculture.org.uk)
May – June 2021 Module in Drawing Ecologies at DJCAD SCQF
2016 – 2018 Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee MFA Art and Humanities
1986 – 1990 Edinburgh College of Art BA (Hons) in Drawing and Painting. 2:1
RECENT EXHIBITIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Jan 2026 - ‘Cura’ - a solo exhibition of recent artworks, Green Gallery, University of Dundee Botanic Gardens.
Dec 2025 - Visual Art Scotland Biennial Exhibition, ‘The Thread That Pulls’, The Mound, Edinburgh
Oct 2025 - ‘Postcards from the Artist's Studio’, Split Collective at Both Gallery, London.
June 2025 -Short Visual Artist Residency, St Andrews Botanic Gardens, St Andrews, Fife (funded by a Fife Visual Artist Award)
November 2024 -Group Micro Exhibition at St Andrews Botanic Garden as part of ‘ArtMoves Fife’, www.artmovesfife.org
June 2024 - June 2025 - TURPS Painting Correspondence Course
2019 - 2025 Participant in North Fife Open Studios. www.openstudiosfife.co.uk
May 2023 - EAST WEST, Two-person Exhibition at Burnside Gallery, Selkirk. https://www.burnsidegallery.co.uk/
May 2023 ‘Drawing is Free’ Tenth Anniversary Group Exhibition at Paris College of Art. www.drawingisfree.org
Sept 2019 Interview ‘In The Frame’ for The Great Outdoors Magazine, www.tgomagazone.co.uk
Dec 2016 - Dec 2018 Visual Art Reviewer. Several articles published in The Skinny Magazine (print), Dundee University Review of the Arts (online), Generator Projects (online),
Sept 2018 Association for Study Literature and Environment (ASLE UKI). Presented my essay ‘Art Proceeds Without A Map’ at Orkney Conference.
April 2018 ‘Genius Loci, The Walk to the Cave’ included in the Walking Library for a Wild City, www.walkinglibraryproject.wordpress.com
2015 - Gingko Projects, New South Glasgow Hospitals Project.
Painting included as part of ‘100 Flowers’ Public Collection.
2014 Art in Healthcare Scotland Ltd. Work included as part of Public Collection.
