My art practice is firstly about looking through drawing, about personal connection to places and vivid encounters with nature. Sometimes they are closely observed, zoomed in, and intimate details of plants, and at other times, they focus on the liminal spaces of paths and light-filled filled spaces between trees.

Care is a driving force behind motivation for creating artworks, first by observing how interconnected everything and everyone are, and then by working, as far as possible, with sustainable and biodegradable art materials. I see drawing as a fundamental way of connecting and thinking in order to pay attention to the natural environment around me.

Colour is also an important element in my art practice, and I have been experimenting with combinations and interplays within the forms of flowers, leaves, shells, land and other natural and organic shapes.

Currently, I am working as an artist within local community lifelong education projects. I teach practical and exploratory visual art workshops, emphasising looking at and engaging with aspects of the local natural environment.

Alison Philp’s work has been displayed in galleries across Scotland. She has a BA(Hons) in Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College of Art and an MFA in Art and Humanities from Dundee University.

“Observation is a tool to empathise. When painters paint using observation, they are empathising. Engaging in empathy is a psychological act made into a physical act when creating art. The painter is not gifting the viewer with a painting but with empathy. Empathy is the action that causes an aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one which creates an enormous amount of empathy”.

Mary Jane Jacobs, ‘Dewey for Artists’ p94, 2018.