Ali McNabney-Stevens

Ali McNabney-Stevens is a Melbourne based contemporary artist who depicts landscape and floral scenes through expression gestures of paint, sketchy linework and mark making. Her work explores the connection between memory, human experience and artistic practice via flashes of past. Bringing these elements together seeks union with the now. For the artist, time is irrelevant and unrecorded. Ali’s process seeks to embody, document and hold true emotional links, all the while obeying a naive promise of the elusive, perfect ending. The relationship Ali has with the Ulster landscape in her home of Northern Ireland evokes deep emotions. The exploration of memories coupled with visual revisiting of unassuming day-to-day happenings provides an expressive hand to the work. Drawing on a distinctive colour palette, she weaves memory and line over controlled layers of paint which emanate luminously from the depths of the linen. Manipulation of the medium suits her expressive style, she relishes in the artistic process, drawing and pushing on every characteristic of the paint. Often returning to pure expressionism through line, Ali finds figurative shape invigorating and primal. A strong sense of motion and urgency is conveyed in fast, fluid movement. Having earned her Honours degree in Design and History of Art from Edinburgh College of Art, with further fine art studies at London’s prestigious Saint Martin’s, Ali consistently displays her pedigree with an impressive body of abstract works that demonstrate versatility and individuality. Ali describes her artistic process as an author writing a book. “I always feel as if I am working on the edge of something, with my sole aim being to give life to the painting. The painting takes me where it wants to go".