Drawing The Line

Graphite, Charcoal, Ink and Oil by Christine Allison

5th to 27th April 2025

CHRISTINE ALLISON – short bio

Christine Allison lives and works in Lyme Regis; her home and studio overlook Lyme Bay and are minutes away from the sea. She trained at St. Martin’s School of Art, London; the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, USA and Exeter University. The sky, sea and shore are a constant inspiration for her work and foraging for ‘finds’ at Black Ven, just East of Lyme Regis, is one of Christine’s favourite activities. These subjects and others from the natural world appear in Christine’s drawings and oil paintings.

Christine is a professional artist and experienced teacher. She has exhibited her contemporary birds of prey oil paintings in successful shows in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and more locally here in the South West. Christine has worked with The Natural History Museum and Bristol Museum and currently delivers workshops to local art groups and runs art courses for Lyme Regis Museum and the Axminster and Lyme Cancer Support charity. Christine also runs 5day art courses with fellow artist, Gail Sagman.

Drawing has always been Christine’s passion and she would describe drawing as her first language; sometimes realistic, sometimes abstracted; drawing underpins all of Christine’s work.

“Using different materials changes the marks I make. I will respond to each subject differently depending on   the properties of the implement in my hand. I love making big charcoal drawings using free, whole-arm marks, then erasing, smudging and working into and over my drawings. I’m in love with water-soluble graphite sticks. I can make big fat, black marks, and add water with a brush. Then work over the drawing and add more water and see a deep, dense, black velvet-like finish appear. With Indian ink and a dip pen I make marks that can’t be changed. You can’t erase, so the drawings are immediate and truthful. They have their own natural flow. Drawing is my first response to a subject.

Sometimes I use all these media together in a drawing. The works become intense abstract patterns, worked over and into. I don’t know how they will end when I start.

Recently I hurt my right hand and so I had to draw with my left hand for a while. There is a freedom about working with one’s non-dominant hand. The process is intensely compelling. The drawings can be surprising and revealing. I highly recommend working in this way from time to time, it’s about doing, not trying, which is liberating.

Much of the work in this exhibition is black and white but I have included some coloured pieces. The Black Ven finds are made using water-soluble wax pastels on canvas. They may look like paintings but they are drawings. Adding water with a brush makes them more painterly but I feel they are really drawings.

Oil paintings are oil paintings but they all begin as drawings using a brush and thin oil paint, sometimes I will draw with a wax pastel onto the canvas first but usually it is brush drawing.

Sometimes I want my work to be realistic and sometimes I don’t. I would rather not be pigeonholed as a realistic or an abstract artist. I guess for me most things start realistically, from a found or selected subject, I think I need that, but then sometimes I allow a piece to develop into something else, until I feel I’ve said all I can about it.

I’ve always loved drawing.”

WORKSHOPS

In each of these workshops we will explore materials and the marks they can make – water-soluble graphite, charcoal, Indian ink and water-soluble wax pastels. Each workshop will follow a theme found in Christine’s exhibition but the interpretation will be yours. It is the material and the subject matter that will influence your outcomes. All materials and paper will be provided however you might like to bring a sketchbook for note taking and experiments.

The three themes, workshop dates and times are as follows –

‘Natural things’

Wednesday 9 April – 2pm-5pm

Saturday 19 April – 10am-1pm

‘Found things’

Saturday 12 April - 10am – 1pm

Wednesday 23 April – 2pm-5pm

‘Abstract things’

Wednesday 16 April – 2pm-5pm

Saturday 26 April – 10am-1pm

The workshops will take place in the main gallery within Christine’s exhibition.

There are 6 places available for each workshop.

Cost per workshop including materials - £35 per person

Please book through the gallery.

If you are a group of 6 and would like to arrange a workshop on a different date during the exhibition please email Christine and she will try to accommodate you.

Email – christine@christineallison.com

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