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Alison Edmonds:  Life Imitating Art

Think of an artist.  What comes to mind?  Someone without much connection to the real world? Someone who sighs a lot and probably has a rather casual attitude to personal hygiene?  Someone who floats around in an irritatingly airy-fairy way, or perhaps flings paint madly at a canvas on the floor while drinking vodka from the bottle?

So it is refreshing to meet Alison Edmonds, a Wiltshire artist with her feet firmly on the ground – or, to be more precise, up to her knees in muck a lot of the time.  Because Alison has made a second career for herself as an artist of the garden.  Using black-and-white photography and mixed media collages, she captures the natural shapes and forms of plants growing in her large, sloping Aldbourne garden.

Introduced to photography by her grandfather, who took pictures for the army during World War I, Alison was prevented by him from following her natural inclinations.  ‘I wasn’t allowed to go to art school at 18,’ she explains with a chuckle, ‘because it was filled with unsuitable men.’  Instead she trained as a nurse in Liverpool – a much more suitable career for a young lady in the 1960s – and promptly met and married a dashing RAF officer named Michael within 5 weeks of meeting him while on a trip to Newquay with her girl friends. He proposed two days after their first date, which very nearly did not occur because he turned up at the wrong hotel.  The ring was bought a day later.  Forty years, two sons, and two grandchildren on, Alison and Michael have one of those rare things:  a happy marriage where both people have the space to explore their own interests.

In the intervening years, Alison has run an ophthalmic unit and a burns unit in South Yemen, worked in Swindon as a health visitor, and lectured in social studies at the Norland Nursery Training College in Hungerford.  She is now studying for her BA in Visual Arts at Winchester School of Art.

Michael first introduced Alison to gardening, and they have worked together on their Aldbourne garden since arriving there 20 years ago.  The massive mature trees which form the rear boundary were not there when they arrived, nor were the terraced slopes now covered in both common and exotic perennials.  There are ponds and archways, sculpture and whimsy.  Everything has been laboriously coaxed from the chalky soil.  Michael and Alison have divided the garden between them into personal areas where each is in charge, Alison’s portion being noticeably larger than Michael’s.  Theirs is a true partnership, and Alison credits Michael’s ‘relaxed’ attitude to housework for giving her the time to create.  ‘Art takes priority over domesticity in our house, and Michael’s support is key.’

Although she is a keen (‘obsessive’ to use her word) gardener now, the original motivation for growing plants was to have easy access to photographic subjects.  But her style is not the pretty kind of botanical print found on teapots or National Trust tableware.  ‘I find plants most interesting visually when they begin to decay, when the petals are falling, when the seed heads form,’ she explains. ‘The shapes and textures are what interest me, without the distraction of colour.’  Tulips and anemones are particular favourites, as are the trees of Savernake forest, especially in winter.  She photographs only in black-and-what, using something called split grade printing to maximise the contrast between the light and dark tones.  The effect is more like an etching than a photograph.

In addition, she creates textile collages which combine scraps of fabric with pieces of photographs, even words.  ‘I use the sewing machine like a pen,’ she says, ‘to “draw” with stitches.’ 

It was not until the children were grown that she had the freedom to pursue her artistic ambitions, but there are advantages to postponing one’s dreams.  ‘Coming to art later in life is very liberating,’ she says, ‘because you are more confident about following your instincts than you are at 18.’  In 1990 Alison’s lifelong passion for art became her full-time occupation, which has resulted in exhibitions at the Mall Galleries in London, the White Horse Bookshop in Marlborough, and the Blue Stone Gallery in Devizes.  In addition, Alison has been the subject of two local BBC portraits.

 It was in 2002 that she began her most ambitious project to date:  the page-a-day art ‘diary’.  Using a wide variety of materials, ranging from textiles to wire mesh to plastic, she creates an image on a 5 x 7 inch card for each – and every – day of her life.  Her goal is to keep it going for five years, and she is halfway there.  It sounds very daunting, but to Alison it provides necessary structure and discipline for her work. ‘Even if we are travelling, I manage to sketch or photograph something to represent the day.  It is a reflection either of how my art is progressing, or what I am doing in my life.  And it’s a way of experimenting with new media, or mixtures of media.’

 ‘I never run out of ideas,’ she says, ‘Every day is something different, whether it is new colours, materials, or textures.’

 Vanessa

This article was published in the Western Daily Press.

www.alison-edmonds.co.uk

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Vanessa