Alison Mc Kenna is an artist and textile designer living between Sussex and Andalusia. She's been working on textile designs for different fashion companies. Her work is characterized by balance, feeling and composition exploring forms, colours and brush strokes. Her practice often works within the narrative of transformation as an artist and individual. She tries to create a sense of space and energy in her drawings and paintings transmitting feeling into form.
Who are you?
Alison Mc Kenna.
Where do you live?
Between Sussex and Andalusia.
What do you do?
I am a painter and fabric designer.
Who & what inspires you?
Fashion, art, music, travel, things of the spirit, elevation.
What doesn't inspire you?
Brexit.
What projects have you been recently working on?
I am an artist and freelance fabric designer. I have been working on fabric designs for Spring Summer 2019 for fashion companies. I have completed a series of 34 large paintings on paper which I hope to show soon.
What projects in your lifetime have the most significance in both of your work?
I am still waiting.
Where is design & art heading?
I hope there will be greater equality and diversity within the art and design world in the immediate future.
Who do you think are the most influential artists & designers in recent years?
Rei Kawakubo (Comme Des Garcon), Ai Weiwei, Nan Goldin, Madonna, Judy Chicago, Jamie Reid, Tracey Emin, Carmen Herrera, Rose Wylie and too many others to mention.
What artists and designers have inspired you in your lifetime?
Too many to list but most recently: Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine De Kooning, Luchita Hurtado, Sonia Delaunay, Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lee Miller, The Black Mountain School, Textiles of the Wiener Werkstätte. All the women throughout recent history that were over looked and disregarded because of their gender but carried on painting regardless.
What would be your best destination in the world?
It changes from day to day, So today it would be the walk from Charleston Farmhouse where the Bloomsbury Group lived in the twenties to Firle Village on a sunny bright Sussex Day.
Stuck on a desert island, three things that you couldn't be without?
Yoga mat, The Yoga Sutras of Master Patanjali which is a collection of 196 Indian Sutras on the theory and practice of yoga and water purification system.
What is your favourite colour & why?
White. Because the world needs more light right now.
CHARLESTON - Cotton Blanket by Alison Mc Kenna
FARLEY 2 - Cotton Blanket by Alison Mc Kenna
FARLEY 1 - Cotton blanket by Alison Mc Kenna
