Alice Wisden

Alice creates portraits of a state of mind by combining her collection of materials representing family life, childhood games and her fascination with theatre. She uses oil paint and oil sticks on canvas and board or over found paintings and then showcases them in baroque found frames, adding further 'antiquity' to her paintings.  This helps encourage the viewer to question and engage with the character's history.  As an artist Alice Wisden is a researcher; she works tirelessly to gain as much information as she can about her subjects, then further developing their narrative until she is able to freeze frame a still from their lives, bringing it into visual reality.  Paintings with a dark and broody palette are layered with clown like naïve graffiti depicting emotions one might rather avoid such as isolation, psychosis and aggression. Alice is inspired by the need to come to terms with our existence and is driven by issues of identity and alienation. Alice believes in the beauty and wry charm available in our experiences she hopes that viewers are able to elaborate on her visual scripts to become playwrights themselves.


 Painting allows me to contain characters permanently frozen in emotionally wrought moments of despair, tormented by a formulated coalition and an alienated outsider. Utilizing graffiti with unabashed clumsiness that appears absurd, comic and disturbing I abruptly corrupt the flow of the pictorial tale, violently disrupting a focal character. This creates an intimacy between the victim and the viewer through stark alienation. There is a confused alliance of the real and the imagined, certain characters have a naivety towards violence as though a game is being played and the realms of the canvas are immortal.
                                                                           - Alice Wisden

Alice Wisden graduated in 2009 from Wimbledon College with a BA in Fine Art and Painting after having completed her HND at the University of Brighton in 2006. She now lives and works in her hometown Brighton. Collectors of her work include several prominent media personalities and paintings by Alice are in public collections including the Museum of Everything.

Please call 020 7703 8396 for more information. The gallery is located at 43 Denmark Hill, Camberwell, SE5 8RS. Nearest stations are: Denmark Hill or Oval.
Call or email [email protected] for an e-catalogue or to attend the private view. The gallery is open to the public Monday through Saturday 9:30am - 6:00pm. www.gxgallery.com