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"Pick Your Poison" is an allegorical apocalypse in which anthropomorphic flowers find themselves victims of asteroids, floods, drone strikes, voodoo, drought, nuclear attack, and even alien abduction. The show is a continuation of recent work which alludes to the story of man's folly, absurdity and the helplessness in our efforts to escape it. In this effort there is an attempt to see the humor in things.
The idea of using flowers as a vehicle for this narration was originally influenced by Yayoi Kusama's monumental and comically styled sculptures "Flowers that Bloom at Midnight". Their simplified and fantastical forms covered with vivid polka-dots seemed to align them-selves almost magically with the circus dot paintings in my recent series "Twist of Fate". Knowing of Yayoi as one of the original New York performance artist, it was a surprise to find the wealth of information about her writings and visual art. Especially influential was her fantasy tales in her 1998 novel "Violet Obsession", which described the experiences of a young girl who can converse with the flowers as agents of the universe.
This series also questions our presumptions about plant consciousness, perception and their shamanistic power. Most ancient cultures recognized animals and plants as characters that can reflect human behavior. Plant Spirit Shamanism understands that plants have an affinity for human beings, that they know our pain, and that their intention is to love and to heal. Simply being close to them and their energy fields can be enough to call back the soul. In the early 1900's, scientist such as Jagadish Chandra Bose conducted experiments finding every plant to have a sensitive nervous system which responds to shock by spasm just as an animal muscle does. Bose further claimed that plants can "feel pain and understand affection"
The process of layering collage, drawing, and painting is the thread that connects every-thing I have done, not only in this show, but in all my work over the past five years. There is a back and forth between "hard work" and "in the moment" states of artistic creation that anchors and expands the work . Most recently the backgrounds are reminiscent of circus patterns which I use as a whimsical counterpoint to the often tragic or caustic subject matter. The work is expressionist, narrative, colorful, full of allegory and elusive in meaning.
Kelly Alison is an American artist primarily working in a rural area south of Houston, Texas. Her work has been exhibited in National and International Museums, most notably at the Shanghai Art Museum in China and the National Museum of Art in Lima, Peru. She has been published in books, catalogs and magazines such as Art in America, Texas Monthly and Town and Country and her work is on permanent exhibition in downtown Houston as part of the Wayfinder project .
Alison was born 1957 and raised in the panhandle town of Plainview, Texas. In the late 70's, early 80's at The University of Houston she was one of the students involved with the original Lawndale Art Annex, ( Houston's first alternative space ) where she studied under Richard Stout, Gail Stack, John Alexander, and James Surls.
In 1985, Alison was recognized as the youngest artist in "Fresh Paint: The Houston School", curated by the highly regarded Barbara Rose and writer, co-curator, Susie Kalil. The prestigious exhibition opened at the Fine Arts Museum in Houston, then traveled to New York to the alternative space, PS1.
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