artists - studios - events - the steeple arts

Alison Mountain

Alison Mountain is a painter and printmaker living and working in Newburgh. She trained in Fine Art at Leeds University in the late 1970s, and then took a Higher Diploma in Painting at the Slade School of Art in London, working alongside figurative artists such as William Coldstream, Euan Uglow and Lucien Freud. In the 1990s she completed a BDes and MDes in Illustration and Printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, and has since taught at a number of Scottish Further and Higher Education Colleges as well as the Edinburgh Rudolf Steiner School.

Alison has extensive teaching experience across a wide range of social backgrounds, from children on the autism/Asperger spectrum to adult beginners and Fine Art Honours students. She passionately believes that the gentle process of exploring the place each of us inhabits in the world can unlock the creative spark in even the most stubborn cases.

“Thinking books” is a term that has evolved through the development work Alison has undertaken with what would conventionally be described as sketchbooks. In collaboration with a wide variety of people, working in schools, she has explored the links that thinking books can make with different areas of the curriculum.

Some her own works show a painterly preoccupation with colour and light, while others, designed for viewing with accompanying text, explore more illustrative concerns based around the subject of midlife.

Alison is currently offering a variety of classes and workshops in a number of locations, notably the new Hat in the Cat shop in Perth which she co-manages with former FAC Artist in Residence Jeanette Sendler.

Contact alison.mountain@googlemail.com for more information, or see the Hat in the Cat's Workshops page.