About | alisonmcgill

Alison McGill is an award winning contemporary Scottish landscape artist who was born in Edinburgh in 1974 and grew up in Lasswade, Midlothian. Her signature mix of oil paint and wax, blends colours and textures to offer a uniquely tactile and almost three dimensional vision of the land and sea. Influences of nature, geological images and aerial photography can all be seen in Alison's work.

While the conventional landscape is Alison's inspiration, her abstract works in wax and oil paint create complex and beautiful textures and unexpected effects. Her pastel sketches are more literal representations of the surrounding landscape and are often starting points for a large oil painting. Her paintings and prints lean towards abstraction, taking the ambiguous qualities of nature as their fascination.

Between 1992 and 1998, Alison was a student at Edinburgh College of Art where she graduated with first class honours and a masters degree in drawing and painting. Her abstract work drew much attention and she was awarded the Helen A Rose Bequest Prize by the college and the 1996 Students Award for Landscape Painting by the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA).

In 1998, Alison joined WASPS Studios at West Park Place, Edinburgh, where she still works today, alongside other contemporary, Edinburgh-based artists such as Stephanie Dees and Donald Provan. She began exhibiting in group exhibitions in local venues shortly after leaving art college. She has been a finalist in the Noble Grossart Painting Prize Exhibition at the Glasgow School of Art in 1998 and the RSA, Edinburgh in 2000.

Alison's first solo show was in 2003 at The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh. She was awarded the Alexander Graham Munro Travel Award by the Royal Scottish Watercolourists Society shortly after. This award enabled her to travel to the States to explore a new topography. The vast panoramic landscapes of Arizona and the Grand Canyon vistas as well as the lush and dramatic landscape of the Hawaiian Islands introduced a new palette and terrain.

New paintings and pastel drawings inspired by her travels were exhibited in a solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery in 2005. Her next solo show there in 2007 saw her return to her Scottish land and sea scapes. Earlier that year Alison collaborated with poet John Killick to produce "Over the Land", celebrating the Scottish landscape in paint and prose and published by Fisherrow Press.

The Royal Glasgow Institute awarded Alison the Armour Painting Award for Distinguished Landscape Painting in 2008. In 2010, her ‘Land, Sea and Sky’ solo exhibition showed at The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh and this was followed by an exhibition for the 30th Anniversary Lichfield Festival at Lichfield Cathedral in 2011. Alison's 2012 " Shifting Seasons' solo show at The Scottish Gallery drew inspiration from walking the coastlines of East Lothian and the Kyles of Bute and featured a superb series of pastels alongside wax and oil compositions depicting the changing seasons.

Group Exhibitions in galleries including: Broadway Modern, Worcestershire, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire, Castlegate House Gallery, Cockermouth, Compass Gallery, Glasgow, Courtyard Gallery, Crail, Frames Gallery, Perth, Fraser Gallery, St Andrews, The Green Gallery, Aberfoyle, Gallery Heinzel, Aberdeen, The House of Menzies, Aberfeldy, McAuley Fine Art, Nexus Galleries, Edinburgh, Meffan Gallery, Forfar, The Old Warehouse Gallery, Dorchester, Red Barn Gallery, Cumbria, Red Rag Gallery, Bath & Stow on the Wold, Riverside Gallery, Stonehaven, Roger Billclilffe Gallery, Glasgow, Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh - mixed group exhibitions in the gallery since 1999 and also at ART2003-10 Art Fair, Islington, London, ‘Art on the Links’ at the Old Course Hotel, St Andrews, 2002 and ‘Living Art Online’ in association with Sothebys.com, Strathearn Gallery, Creiff, White Space Gallery, Totnes and in annual exhibitions at Aberdeen Art Gallery, RSW (Royal Scottish Watercolours Society), RGI (Royal Glasgow Institute), Paisley Art Institute, VAS (Visual Arts Scotland) and SSA (Scottish Society of Artists), RSA, Edinburgh.

Further group and solo exhibitions are planned for future dates.

Charity Events include exhibitions for ‘Art for Breast Cancer’, Bonhams and Phillips Auctioneers, Edinburgh, the ‘Postcards for Sick Kids’ Auction, Lyon & Turnbull Auctioneers, Cancer Research Exhibition, Edinburgh, Capability Scotland Charity Exhibition, Edinburgh, Macmillan Cancer Charity Exhibitions, Edinburgh and ‘CHASE’ Fundraising Exhibition, The Royal College of Art, London.

Selections of works are included in the Edinburgh Western General Hospital, the NHS Art Fund, the Royal College of Physicians, Marie Curie Hospice, Hampstead, Anglo American, London, Bank of Scotland Headquarters and the Stirling University Collection. In addition, Edinburgh College of Art, British Midland Airways Executive Lounge at Edinburgh Airport and Standard Life Insurance have work in their collections. Paintings and prints are also in private collections throughout the world.