Artist
About
Ali Sweeting is a mineral painter, her pieces sit in a distinct territory, between the abstraction of the St Ives tradition and contemporary practices using natural materials. The paintings are not landscape paintings. They are paintings made from landscape.
Minerals, hand-gathered from the coast, pigments and Cornish tin laid into the surface to catch and return the light. In places they rise into sculptural relief, the materials worked into form. Devonshire clay, Somerset willow charcoal and acrylic build colour, depth and tone. Each painting is layered slowly, allowed to rest, then returned to, deepening over weeks.
‘In 2011, a life-changing event left me with an all-consuming desire to paint and a passion to create. For fifteen years I have developed the mineral and metal practice at its own pace and shared only with a select few. My relationship to the natural world is longer standing. I grew up living between Africa and a rural Devonshire farm, roaming the countryside, playing in streams and moulding river clay with my hands. It still brings the same joy!’
Ali’s studio sits on the edge of the Somerset Levels,England, Set amongst four thousand apple trees, with ancient bluebell woodland rising behind, in spring the orchard turns, awash of pink. A place held quietly apart, where time settles into each painting.
Tidal Alchemy is the first collection Ali has released publicly from the studio. Inspired by the Fal Estuary in Cornwall, a quiet sanctuary to Ali for over forty years, captivated by the tide, the riverine oak woodland and the call of curlews,
Works are held in private collections across the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States and southern Africa.
distilled
into Tidal Alchemy
