Boston-based artist Alison Darrow (b. 1951) started as an illustrator, then studied painting at Bard College. She has pursued an autodidact’s MFA ever since, exploring narrative illustration, relief printmaking, and ceramics. After more than 20 years in corporate deserts, in 2016 she returned to painting, using paint and pixels to explore abstraction. Carrie Moyer, Charline Von Heyl, and Simon Williams are among her heroes.

Curiosity, love of surprises, and humor drive her work. Her primary inspiration is her urban environment and the patterns made by light, shadow, and reflection: inchoate and ineffable glories inherent in the everyday. Believing that our hyper-connected world has dulled our capacity for wonder, she aspires to reawaken amazement and curiosity. She has participated in group shows at Brickbottom Artists Association, Toe River Art Gallery, ARTSPACE at Untitled, and the Fort Point Arts Community galleries; her work is in private collections in Texas, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

“Art's primary metaphysical building block is that which has never been imagined. This is why I can say that art will go on. The reason is that art is an advanced abstract operating system devised for imagining the unseen, gleaning the group mind, a tool to invent new protocols, experience rapture from form, explore consciousness, map reality, create constellations of unspoken communication that echo across millennia — things that never change but that are different for every person who sees it and is even different every time we look at the same work. This is because art is the ability to embed the unimaginable in material. Creativity is a survival strategy; it's in every bone in our bodies and always has been.” — Jerry Saltz, March 2020

“Turning an art eye on reality makes you feel as if the world is performing just for you.”
— Bianca Bosker, 2024