Jonathan Alibone is a British artist whose figurative paintings and drawings have the ability to enchant and unsettle observers at once. Working within the traditions of Western Art, Jonathan’s meticulously crafted images disrupt expectations, creating narratives which invite and resist interpretation and tap into our insatiable hunger for meaning.
Jonathan Alibone’s Style and Approach
Jonathan Alibone invites the viewer to explore a world that is recognizable, yet also strange and unknowable. It is within this space, between what we can be said to know, perceive or believe, and that which remains hidden or beyond reach, that Jonathan's art is seen to operate.
His practice articulates contemporary social, cultural, and environmental anxieties through the conventions of the landscape and Romantic traditions in Western art. Through allusions to natural and cultural phenomena, Jonathan develops themes of atrophy, decay and collapse, and explores myths of origin and identity within our present (and historical) context of uncertainty and rupture.
Jonathan's practice is continually evolving, shifting restlessly from figuration, to still life, to eerie landscapes with forbidding structures, and then back again. His paintings occupy the space between the seductive and the unsettling, a liminal zone which can be understood as both a physical and a psychological landscape: a contested frontier that re-presents the familiar as something strange and uncanny, alluring and yet inscribed with menace and foreboding.
Press and Collections
Jonathan’s thrilling works have been exhibited globally, with pieces featuring in collections in the UK, Europe, Russia and North America. Jonathan is also a resident of The Artist's Sanctuary in Northampton, England, and has co-curated several exhibitions and collaborated on many projects, working in a variety of media, including video, installation, and sound.
