ARTIST’S STATEMENT

“Unlike most contemporary artists, I have been extremely influenced by medieval illuminations and Persian and Indian miniatures, which has set the scale for my work, and a tendency toward meticulous detail and brilliant color. I prefer subjects of a whimsical, humorous nature, and to represent what I would like to see, rather than what is.

I have also worked on a large collection of ‘Stamps from Tuzo’, which originated as an homage to Donald Evans, but took on a life of its own, and went on to include ‘letters’ to any number of artists whose work I have enjoyed immersing myself in”.

PROFILE

A resident of San Diego, California since 1975, the artist has lived throughout the United States, and in France and Spain. She studied art at Washington University in Saint Louis, the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and received a B.A. from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She has had a number of one-person shows locally and throughout the U.S. as well as being featured in several invitational and juried exhibitions.

Excerpt from the article by Marilyn Hagberg, San Diego Union, 4/3/85

“Alison Baldwin is an Alice in Wonderland. In very small paintings and etchings, she entices the viewer through the picture glass to miniature worlds of rainbow colors, benign creatures, and gardens of delight - magical lands where nights are Arabian, Pan plays a saxophone, and whimsy reigns.

Baldwin’s major influences and greatest enthusiasms are compressed (in her work): medieval and Persian manuscripts, Moorish and Arabic designs, Renaissance engravings and the paintings of Paul Klee, made up postage stamps of Donald Evans, and storybook illustrations of Arthur Rackham and Nicolai Bayley. A love of nature and fondness for classical mythology and Egyptian art (is also evident).

Throughout this vivid display of exuberant eclecticism, however, one sees the vision and handiwork of only one artist. Over the past decade, Baldwin has developed a marvelously original and consistent style, a masterful sense of design, (and) an awesome devotion to detail”.