Ax Art Works is the art of Alice Lister BA, PG Dip,
portrait artist, painter, sculptor and tutor.
Born in Aberdeen 1964
Studied Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, Scotland 1982-86
NSCAD, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada 1984
Post Graduate in Printmaking at Brighton University, E. Sussex, England 1987-89
After spending 18 years working in Theatre and Performance and enjoying 'painting with light', helping students and directors realise their ideas on stage, Alice decided it was time for a change, moved to Berlin, where she is currently living and dedicating some serious time to her art work.
Exhibitions:
Collating information....
Works in Permanent Collections:
Nova Scotia College of Art And Design, Canada
Dundee City Art Gallery, Scotland
Dundee University, Scotland
I believe that writing about ones art is the last thing an Artist will do. It is the intellectualizing of something from which the source is instinctive or reactionary, sometimes emotional. It is for many, whose natural bent is centered on the visual, extraordinarily hard to rationalize and verbalize. It is like having a 4 dimensional (solid and time based) happening and squishing it all into one dimension… a piece of string…Something gets missed, unless you happen to be a literally gifted writer. Perhaps this bit of string is important, as if it shows the path through the darkest and deepest forest, without which one would be hopelessly lost. In which case I am uncertain of who benefits form this process, the artist or the audience, perhaps both. For the artist; a process of consolidation and review. For the viewer; an explanation, a validation or a deepening expansion of the visual experience. For me it is an addition; a separate creative explanation. I want the art to stand on its own and be interesting in it’s own right. I don’t wish to use the intellectual and concept as a crutch or cover up for a visual ineptitude. I also have to recognise that the choices I make as an artist may be subconscious, when I write about it I may not write about the most obvious elements in my work noticed by a viewer. I like this possibility. I prefer the possibility that an individualism gives more variation than expected. Still, despite my denouncements, my artwork does have a conceptual and intellectual foundation and if you want to read about it, here goes:
Like many women artists, I experimented and examined the role of the female form. I wanted to make a statement about voyeurism and objectification of the body, in particular women. It was a product of the time. I started this process in the heat of the feminist movement in the mid 80s (perhaps the extremist end of the movement) My artistic mentors were Helen Chadwick, Cindy Sherman and Susan Sonntag. I also began my liking for symbolist artists and the fantastic/magical realists. Much of my early forays into this area were photographic, starting with naked images of my own body (because using a model seemed to tap into the voyeuristic objectification I was attempting to challenge).The photographic sessions rapidly transformed into a kind of private performance. I took pictures of myself in a photographic studio with a long cable release. This was an empowering process where at last the action of creating the images was free from the objectification of the societal gaze. There was also a strong element of randomization as I couldn’t control the image completely, it was limited by the technical set up I had and my own ingenuity, but this made for some interesting and unexpected images. My only problem was as soon as I took my images to the arena of the exhibition space I was back to square one. They became objectified nudes again. I decided the stark nature of the photographic image wasn’t working for me so I moved to printmaking where I could integrate the photographic images in a process and somehow shake off the documentary nature of the image. I moved into print, where screen-printing had a long lasting effect on my work. I became very fixed on colour and simplified shapes. It felt like a soothing balm for the hot and convoluted knot of feminist/sexuality body issues. I also discovered that I irritated the purest printmakers, because I wasn’t interested in meticulous editions and I wanted to mix print processes, lithography with screen print, painting and transfer techniques all on the same paper or canvas. I became interested in Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Kitaj. It was around this time that I completely exasperated my father who was a Presbyterian minister, by hanging a huge transparent nude of myself in the Manse stairwell. He ripped it down announcing that it wasn’t appropriate. Sure it wasn’t! From the Scottish traditional artistic training I received in Dundee, I found nobody had anything positive to say about my work. This completed my all round rejection of my artwork. I wasn’t a true painter, nor a real printmaker, not a pure photographer nor just a performance artist …..and I did all of those things. I didn’t do self portraits although I used myself as a subject matter and I deliberately tried to make art that WASN’T beautiful…. I decided I was an un-artist. Slightly disillusioned, I concentrated on my new job, working in the Visual and Performing Arts course in Brighton University
This was the beginning of 18 years of working in Theatre and performance. My early interest in photography and studio work transferred easily into Theatre lighting and set building. All my spare time was taken up with sport activities, first Coastal Rowing then Rugby, then dog sledding and showing. Sport was my alternative to making my own art work. The Theatre satisfied my creative interests. Theatre lighting, for me, is merely painting with light, and I always was fascinated with live performance. The magic of a good live performance is unmatched by anything on video or film. I think working in theatre was very good for me to collect experience, professionalism and broaden my visual stimulus as well as distilling my artistic ideals, but as time went on I became frustrated with creating for other people. I felt as if I had lost something- it felt important!.. like an arm,… or my soul. I had to make my own art again. Almost by accident I fell into dog portraiture. People asked me to paint their dogs and I found that I really enjoyed it. Somehow it tapped into the same seam of interest I had with my photographic nude work. I looked for the life spark, the character, not just an image or the simple notion of an animal or a body. Why else does a person want a portrait? My own skill suited this (at last my traditional artistic training paid off!) I am a good draughtsman, I make accurate and lifelike portraits and I happily work from photographs. I found people liked that too. I also liked the way the photographic image captured a moment or a particular look. My personal favorite is the look to the viewer – the moment of contact or recognition. I like the intimate connection between the viewer and the viewed.
Ironically the move back into painting for me has solved one of my biggest artistic problems. I always wanted to manipulate and “process” my photographic sources and having tried screen-print, lithography, etching, photocopy transfers, photogravure and gum bichromate, … painting seems to complete the loop for me. At last I am happy with the medium, even though the long journey has taken me a meandering way, perhaps the long route was necessary to finally understand.
At last my work has a place to expand and develop, the discipline of doing portraiture has been a mutually beneficial skill, focus and foil for the intellectual and aesthetic mine field of contemporary art. I’m working on a couple of exhibition strands as well as a live art and internet based art project in collaboration with a musician (this is top secret at the moment until it is ready to go online!)
The Sudoku Series is unashamedly influenced by the Japanese puzzle. I started with the conviction that I wanted to create some paintings which were domestically proportioned (as opposed the the current fashion of installation, gallery sized work) Call it retrograde if you will, but I felt I wanted to make something that was more of an object again. I had been working on performances and video projections and time based art. I was fed up with working on conceptual pieces and longed for a traditional ‘jewel-like’ painting. I wanted the mantelpiece feel. ‘The Sudoku series’ reflects it’s domestic format with a domestic subject matter. Well, domestic to me, at any rate, I painted my dogs and used myself as the subject. The subjects are ‘trapped’ inside a square format and over-scaled. They have an intense aura, and in a square format and bright colouring they have a ‘street sign’ feel.
‘Light works’ have a similar origin in their conceptualism, they are meant to be domestically scaled art objects or possibly light fittings. They are 2D sculptures with integrated light elements. They are constructed entirely out of home improvement materials, MDF, emulsion, glue etc. It is unclear as to their ultimate purpose, are they products, designed for the rich homes as electrical fittings? Or are they art? Are they sculptures? Or paintings? In artistic or aesthetic terms those questions are utterly unimportant, but in the realm of critical appraisal they are fundamental. Ultimately the answer can only be the viewer’s interpretation.
I am looking for exhibition venues for 2008 when both series should be finished.