Alison Critchlow is an abstract landscape painter based in north west Cumbria, with a studio beside the Solway Firth. She has been a professional artist for 30 years. She trained at Humberside College of Higher Education, Falmouth School of Art, Cornwall and completed three years postgraduate study with Turps Art School. She was artist in residence on the Isle of Iona throughout February 2017 and took up a residency at Cill Rialaig, Ireland in 2023.

Alison has exhibited widely throughout Britain notably at: Gallagher & Turner, Newcastle; The Art House, Wakefield; University of Cambridge; The Wordsworth Museum, Grasmere; Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries; Fairfield Mill; Brantwood; Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh; Bianco Nero and Tullie House, Carlisle.

Alison has worked closely with the Wordsworth Trust on several projects in particular their ‘Weather Words’ (2017) and ‘Poetry & Paint’(2018-24) projects. In 2021 she was awarded an Arts Council England grant which funded a period of research and development focused on Romanian American artist Hedda Sterne. This project saw her working with mentors in the UK and the USA and opened her eyes to a whole new set of artistic possibilities. In 2022 she was the recipient of an Oppenheim John Downes Trust award and in 2024 she was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize, which saw her work exhibited in Cardiff, London and at the Yorkshire Art Space in Sheffield. She has just been elected a member of Contemporary British Painting and is very excited to see where that might lead.