ALISON ARMSTRONG
OLD GOLD

Passage to China

Alison Armstrong came to Westbeth Artist Housing in 1981 as a published author; since then she resumed her interest in painting and began to exhibit at Westbeth in 1989. A member of Japanese Artists Association of New York for more than ten years, she also exhibits annually at Tenri Gallery. Her art is held in private collections in England and North America . She has an M.Litt. from Oxford University and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from NYU, teaches writing and art history at School of Visual Arts and BMCC, and continues to speak and write about art and aesthetics as well as to make art.

ALison Armstrong Artist Statment for OLD GOLD EXHIBITION

This series of textured gold paintings arose from various interests. I have painted in other ways, including the use of Sumi-e, Japanese brush painting studied with my late Sensei, Koho Yamamoto. However, I also became interested in other forms.
Antique gold screens from the Meiji period, Russian orthodox religious icons, and gilt bronze used in 18th-early 19th century Federal style household furnishings are uses of gold as a reflecting method in interior spaces. The metal itself is very special in comparison with other precious metals. As a metaphor in literature and in museum collections I have pondered my attraction to the qualities of gold: ancient gold artifacts such as bronze age gold torques, earplugs, and other jewelry dug from the bronze age bogs in Ireland and similar objects found in bronze age Greek, Trojan, Persian, and Egyptian cultures and later in Rome and to our present day, all point to the special qualities of gold. Gold does not oxidize/rust/tarnish, gold is very heavy but soft enough to be beaten into feather-light gold leaf. It has the associations of the eternal, the perfect. When a sculptor friend gave me several pounds of steel dust from the floor of his studio, and a painter friend gave me a jar of marble dust, and then I began to collect quartz pebbles and sand from the beach, I experimented with thickening and texturing gold oil paint in order to enhance its reflective qualities and give it the depth and illusion of age.

–Alison Armstrong
Westbeth
October 1st 2016