Alison Griffin

Alison Griffin is an artist based in Norwich, Norfolk. Her work centres around her obsession with childhood memories and experiences, which she uses to explore her interaction with her everyday surroundings. Working from photographs, memorabilia and dream events, she creates unsettling images with an uncanny and often nightmarish aesthetic, and they carry a cinematic quality that comes from her interest in dramatic lighting and in the suspense of film noir. She draws above all, mostly in pencil, and often combines it with oil paint, watercolour and pastel.

Griffin graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2012 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. Jonathan Jones of The Guardian saw her final year show and described the work as curious and memorable, calling her large-scale piece Behind Every Window Lies Another Hidden Story a brilliantly authoritative drawing. She was selected for the Clyde & Co. Art Award in 2012 as part of their programme to support and mentor emerging artists, and in 2016 she won the artsdepot Open prize and was selected for the Black Swan Arts Open by a panel that included Gavin Turk and Lucy McDonald, Associate Director of Hauser and Wirth.

She was elected an Associate Member of the Society of Graphic Fine Art in 2023 and shortlisted for the Sir John Hurt Art Prize in 2024. Her work is held in private collections nationally and internationally, and she is represented by Cavaliero Finn.