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Alison Berry has studied at Yale (BA cum laude 1980), The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, and Brooklyn College CUNY (MFA 1990).

She has exhibited work at galleries including The Painting Center (New York, NY), White Columns (New York, NY), The Soho Center for Visual Artists (New York, NY), The Marymount Manhattan College Gallery (New York, NY), Westbeth Gallery (New York, NY), Kendall Art and Design (Hudson, NY), The Erector Square Gallery (New Haven, CT), Works II Gallery (Southampton, NY), and the Fendrick Gallery (Washington, DC).

Berry currently lives and works in New York City. She has taught at Brooklyn College and the Maryland Institute of Art and Design.

Her work is in the public collection of Brook Partners , and many private collections.

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Artist's Statement - June 2009

It seems to me that most people find their way through life guided by some complex but invisible atlas. The features of this conceptual geography are not hills, oceans and highways, but rather the emotions, beliefs and values we hold, both biologically and culturally. In our complex modern world, ancient religious traditions exist side by side with new social and political relationships, and revolutionary scientific knowledge. Ephemeral networks of passion and belief frame and condition our experience of the world. Often our most fundamental convictions are the hardest to define. I try to make pictures of them.

As artifacts of the human psyche, images and symbols are endlessly fascinating, whether culled from the archives of history, a scientific text, or religious manuscript. Since my subject is a vision of the mind's eye, I prefer the conceptual framework of maps, and freely combine the visual conventions of cartography, architecture, technical diagrams and illustration. The traditions of manuscript illumination and Persian miniature painting are sources of great inspiration.

My materials are simple but modern. My supports are usually paper and smooth wood panels. A mixture of media such as matte acrylics, dispersed pigment bound with a variety of acrylic polymer mediums, liquid wax, and ink, provide a wondrous array of colors and qualities, while ensuring a stable, lightfast surface.

Inherently, the process of making a painting is a dance between mental and physical realms. The overlay of form and content speaks to the mystery of matter and consciousness. Color evokes the passion of life in all its subtle complexity. Questions are probed through veils of pigment and networks of shape. At the journey's end, there are no answers, but simply the experience of wonder. That is what I hope to share.