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ALISON MARIE DALE | AN ARTIST’S STATEMENT
ALISON MARIE DALE | AN ARTIST’S STATEMENT
For most of my life, the practice of making art has been both my greatest therapy and path of meaningmaking. While I'm immersed in tracing woodgrain, experimenting with brush patterns, or cutting up old Life magazines, I find myself in a trancelike state, connected not only to the sensuality of space around me but also the flow of time and history. Making collage work, for me, is like a divination practice, where I am able to make profound internal discoveries about how humans make sense of their place within the natural world around us through printed historical narratives of our collective subconscious. I love to begin my process by slowly and deliberately painting the grain of my wood panels. Doing this allows me to touch in with the beautiful growth patterns of mother nature through my hands, tapping into what I feel is the most beautiful art form possible. Next, I intuitively piece together collage elements and paint strokes that call to me, and oftentimes I'm surprised by the meaning I find in the resulting image.
I created this particular piece, “Billionaire Apes in Space,” in the summer of 2021, when billionaires Bezos, Branson, and Musk were all taking part in a personal space-race-for-the-one-percent. We were still in the height of a global pandemic where people were suffering and tests and treatment were unattainable, and meanwhile these ridiculous humans were blatantly spending millions on their joyrides to the edge of the atmosphere. Unsurprisingly, many Earth-ridden human apes were in full support of this, as we were sold the great aspiration of space holidays for all, one fine day in the future. The dollar bills collaged onto the ape's heart, hand, and eyes shows the pervasiveness and perverseness of the pursuit of money in our capitalistic society among the inequalities that surround us. This work, and many of my other paintings and collages, seek to spark curiosity about our perception of humanity's place within nature and help us recognize our deep interconnection with the world around us.
Alison Dale is a mixed-media artist, astrologer, and somatic guide. Born and raised under the big, starry skies of Tesuque, New Mexico, her work draws upon humanity's deep innate connection to the cycles of the cosmos. After graduating from Santa Fe High, Alison studied anthropology at Tulane University, lived and taught in Brazil and China, and then settled in the San Francisco Bay Area for over a decade. While there, she joined the startup wave and founded Artlarking, a multimedia production company, and Flipcause, a fundraising and supporter engagement platform for nonprofits. She returned home to New Mexico in 2020 to raise her daughter, make art, and get back in touch with the vast land and sky.
