As a visual artist, the aim of my work is to explore how boundaries, borders and edges ‘feel’, how we interact with them and how we are, consciously and sub-consciously, conditioned by them. One of the central paradoxes of todays’ world is that we are both more connected to each other and, at the same time, subject to a myriad of new physical boundaries and emotional constraints. We are essentially hyper-connected, but also potentially isolated. My painting is a response to this; it seeks to explore how everything is connected, how everything contains everything else, and also how boundaries and barriers shape our perception and experience.
My work references landscape, but not in the traditional sense. Rather, I explore a landscape as a metaphor, infusing emotion within the geography of a personal ‘scape’ – in effect, an inner landscape infused with the outer landscape. Through the use of colour, texture and scale, each painting contains a suggestion of a place within a place, loosely bound within outer boundaries and edges. Borders define an area, and my work leads you to question how you respond as you cross from one border to another. It has a notion of ‘edge’ where nothing is isolated or separate, but is connected, and it asks where exactly the personal landscape ends and the geographic landscape begins.
Colour is a crucial part of my practice. My career in illustration has taught me how powerful colour can be in creating instantaneous suggestion. Colour evokes not only an immediate connection to the viewer but an insinuation of place and a feeling of memory
Alex Ayliffe is a contemporary abstract artist living and working near Woodbridge, Suffolk. Since 2017 she has painted full time and is establishing herself as a significant abstract artist. Her work explores boundaries, borders and edges, questioning how we interact with them.
In her work Alex says she is responding to today’s paradox of us being both more connected, yet subject to a host of physical barriers and emotional constraints. Her paintings explore an inner landscape of emotion and an outer geographical landscape. She uses colour, texture and scale to create the notion of a place within a place.
After graduating from Westminster University in 1983 Alex initially pursued a very successful career in illustration, becoming a best selling children's author and illustrator. In 2000 she won the Sainsbury's prize for children's illustration.
In 2019 she graduated with an MA course in Fine Art (with distinction) from the University of Hertfordshire which confirmed her new direction as a contemporary abstract artist. 2 of her works were selected for the University of Hertfordshire permanent collection.
