Allison Stewart Show at Desert Art Collection & Sculpture Garden in Palm Desert

Apr 30, 2013
10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

New Orleans artist Allison Stewart, accomplished painter with clients across the United States, will show, for the first time in California, her paintings at Desert Art Collection & Sculpture Garden on San Luis Rey Avenue at El Paseo in Palm Desert.  The show entitled, A Fragile Dialogue, is her introduction to the residents of and visitors to the Coachella Valley.  Her show opens April 1st and continues through April 29th.  There will be an artist reception during the El Paseo Artwalk on Thursday, April 4, 5-8pm. 

Born in Chicago, Allison Stewart has lived and worked in New Orleans for over thirty years. She received a B.S. from Spring Hill College in Mobile and a M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans.

Allison Stewart has exhibited extensively throughout the country. Her work is included in many public, corporate, institutional and private collections including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the U.S. Department of State Art in Embassies Program, the Historic New Orleans Collection, American Express, Chase Manhattan Bank and Texaco.

Stewart has gained national recognition for her paintings expressing the complex and disturbing dialogue between man and nature.  She is inspired by increasingly fragile environments and the ultimate interconnectedness of all living things. She uses layers of color, light, form and texture to address issues of beauty and loss, time and transformation.  Residing somewhere between realism and abstraction, the paintings become visual diaries upon which Stewart records her responses to the threatened landscape. 

Allison Stewart investigates the conditions that have resulted in the loss of wilderness areas, particularly the fragile Louisiana coastline.  Expanding on that focus, Stewart, a trained biologist, now includes the losses occurring in other parts of the country.  Stewart addresses the precarious balance between Man and Nature and the need to record the moments preceding the changes, the moments just before the balance of life is altered irrevocably by Man's dominance over Nature. 

Allison says of her work, “Time, nature, and the obsessive need to leave my mark…trace elements and energy flows…my work is a reflection on life processes and ecological cycles and the interconnectedness of things. I am particularly interested in the intersection of the natural world with the manmade environment and in recent years I have observed the profound changes that man has brought to the natural terrain. We live in a time when the web of life is unraveling, when order and balance are  threatened. I want to record the moments before that balance is altered irrevocably.”

 She continues, “I work in the space between becoming and dissolving. Fragments of flora and fauna, ancient artifacts, maps and symbols emerge and disappear, buried under layers of pigment and washes. The paintings become visual diaries, notes to myself about vanishing landscapes and vanishing cultures. A painting evolves slowly, through layers of gesso, scraping away, centering, focusing, performing the ritual gestures that are part of the process. It's an organic process, through which I become in touch with who I am and how I view the world.”

Some in the Coachella Valley may already be familiar with Ms. Stewart’s paintings because they grace the lobby and conference room at Mainero Smith Consulting in Rancho Mirage.

 A native of New Orleans, Allison maintains studios in that city and Aspen, Colorado.  She serves as a juror, curator and guest instructor in New York, New Orleans and Colorado.  She has served on the board of several arts organizations in New Orleans.  In 1998 she co-founded KID smART, a Louisiana 501.c.3 non-profit organization to teach under resourced children in Orleans Parish important life lessons through hands on art activities in the visual and performing arts (www.kidsmart.org).

 Allison has won numerous awards and grants including an individual artist fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts in 1988, an individual artist grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in 1997, and the Mary Freeman Wisdom Foundation Grant in 1995.  In 2005 she was awarded an Artist in Residence position at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado.  She has been featured in publications too numerous to list but include Art in America and Southern Living magazines.

 Stewart is represented by the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, Kathryn Markel Gallery in New York, Forré Floria Gallery in Aspen, Gail Severn Gallery in Sun Valley and now Desert Art Collection in Palm Desert. 

 The Artist Reception on Thursday, April 4th, is free and open to the public.  For more information call 760/674-9955 or visit the gallery website at www.desertartcollection.com .  Desert Art Collection & Sculpture Garden is located at 45-350 San Luis Rey Avenue in the El Paseo gallery and shopping district in Palm Desert, next to the Union Bank.

Desert Art Collection and Sculpture Garden
45350 San Luis Rey Ave.
Palm Desert, CA
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For more information:

Fedderly Companies

Telephone: 760-674-9955
Contact name: Jana

Website: http://www.desertartcollection.com