Daily Inspiration: Meet Alison Underwood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alison Underwood.

Hi Alison, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
My name is Alison Underwood, and I am a visual artist living and working in Nashville, TN. It took some time to be able to say that, as I think I pursued every tangential path to being a full-fledged artist that I could! My path has continually circled. I had a lot of fear of going after the thing I truly wanted, and always hoped that something else would be ‘close enough’ to be fulfilling.

After college I moved to NYC to pursue my Master’s degree in History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parsons. After graduating I worked in graphic design, interior design, museums, art fairs, galleries, as an artist’s assistant, etc., really the whole gamut of creative pursuits is somewhere on my resume. This has been immensely helpful as it has given me an inside look at the market and machinations surrounding art. Unfortunately, I think this aspect remains a mystery for many artists. It was through a stroke of luck that I first found gallery representation. I was perusing classifieds online when I saw a new nomadic gallery, Landing Contemporary Art, was looking for artists to add to their roster.

I immediately reached out with images of my work, and a few months later we were putting on a show in a converted yoga studio in Queens. This was the push I needed to pursue art-making full-time. At the start of 2020, I took a leap of faith and moved to Nashville where I could afford to have more space, time, access to fabrication equipment, and a car Even though the art market is much larger in New York, I decided to prioritize my work and optimize for creating to the best of my ability. So far, so good.

I’ve made more art than I ever have and continued to work with Landing Contemporary, as well as New York art advisory ABXY. I was honored to be included in Nashville’s first Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition (MOCAN) and I’ve also found representation with the Nashville gallery Modfellows. I am currently deep in the creation process for my second show with them. The new works will be unveiled on the evening of July 23rd alongside works from Olena Noelle.

This is a free, public event hosted by the gallery and readers are welcome to attend!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My first opening in early 2020 was shuttered five days after opening due to the Covid-19.

It was a bummer, but we had a wonderful opening reception and I am grateful to have been able to experience the energy in the room that night. My opinion is that every entrepreneurial or creative pursuit has more than its fair share of confusion and navigational conundrums. I know this is almost repeated to the point of meaninglessness, but it’s true that you will need to pursue your own path.

What worked for someone else will not necessarily be what you should replicate in order to succeed. This is not to say that you shouldn’t learn from others. It’s important to take stock of what options are available to you, what strengths are already at your disposal and lean into them.

For me, that has meant a move, continual stylistic refinement, turning a second bedroom into a studio, and building a practice that I find rewarding and also produces work viewers and collectors can connect to. I like to maintain a dialogue with my galleries and network on the strength of certain pieces, marketing ideas, and pricing.

I will say I struggle with the isolation of being an artist. It’s a lot of alone time, and frankly, it would be impossible if I didn’t have a few close artist friends. It can also be very hard to find aligned opportunities to get your work out into the world. All too frequently, there is a massive effort for very little return, but you have to trust that everything has a compounding effect, everything builds on itself.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a 2-D artist. I would consider myself a mixed media artist, as my pieces are usually some combination of painting and drawing. I also dabble in printmaking, digital work, and collage. I’ve been working with a lot of surrealist imagery lately. I am trying to develop my own visual vocabulary to explore the psychology of desire.

I’m interested in the fear and anticipation that exists at the threshold of a choice. Portals, masked figures, hair: this is what I’ve been focusing on. The hair has been especially relevant for the last 3 years or so. I’ve found a way to draw it in oil-colored pencils that gives it this electric, animated energy. The large hairpieces feel related to Op-art, it’s a little like a hallucination if you stare at it for too long. I have also been creating these masked figures for about a year now. I’ve considered them muses, or some kind of divine being.

I don’t think they are meant to be fully human. I tried to obfuscate their distinguishing features, to do away with the specificity of a portrait. At the moment what I am most proud of is this upcoming show at Modfellows with Olena Noelle. I’m also proud of myself for starting down this path where I can only see a few steps in front of me. There’s a lot of faith and self-reliance to practice here.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I remember other kids telling me that I was ‘weird’ a lot. It’s never bothered me. People still tell me that, and I take it as a compliment. I think artists should be weird. I grew up in a small town in western Kentucky. My family’s house was (and still is) on a farm with cows, horses, and one very charming donkey. I was always very fixated on making things.

Crafts, baking, drawing, building things out of the dirt; I just liked to create things that involved physical manipulation and had some aesthetic results. I also didn’t know anyone who created contemporary art. Maybe they painted as a hobby or taught small classes on the side, but the idea of having a professional practice was very mysterious to me. Perhaps that was part of the allure. I took art classes in neighbor’s kitchens, and I did a lot of theatre in high school.

I was very captivated by that form of expression for a while. Practicing how to inhabit an experience you haven’t had is very intense. You end up feeling it in your body in a very real way. Actually, and this sounds like a punchline, but I was president of the drama club senior year. I hope there’s some of that intensity in the work I’m doing now.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.alisonunderwood.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alison_underwood.jpg/

Image Credits
Headshot photographed by Olena Noelle