Gone Astray Painting

Alanna Eakin (b.1988) is an emerging British painter currently living and working in London. She graduated in 2010 with a BA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martin’s London. Alanna has shown work in gallery exhibitions and art fairs in London and nationwide. Alanna's work is concerned with themes of nature, escapism and nostalgia. She has a particular interest in colour, light and abstract mark making. The paintings are moments in time with stories attached allowing the viewer to place themselves within and enabling them to form a connection. She collects references from the everyday, from travels to exotic places and through memories both present and in childhood. Imagination, memory and imagery allow her to translate a dreamlike, fairytale scenario onto the surface, playing with colour, light and dimensions. The paintings themselves are planned out in terms of colour and composition with the process often inspiring a completely disparate conclusion. Alanna follows her own set of rules. Using surprising colour palettes and saturated hues, they are made up of layers of materials with particular attention paid in the initial stages to the unpredictable nature of abstract mark-making, using the paint to inform each decision often in a suggestive way with one or two concise brushstrokes. Resulting in a combination of clean lines with free expressive strokes. The later stages of the painting are carefully considered and composed, blurring the line between abstraction and figuration. She explores history, observes nature and combines elements of architecture, creating her own narrative as if existing in another time or place.