Alison Hall American, b. 1980

Alison Hall is a contemporary artist whose work intricately weaves historical references with deeply personal narratives. Rooted in her Southern heritage, poetic influences, and the enduring patterns found in Giotto’s frescoes, Hall’s practice transforms repetition into reverence, exploring the intersections of labor, devotion, and abstraction. Her meticulously crafted paintings are defined by geometric precision and a meditative approach to mark-making. Working primarily with graphite and paint, Hall’s process is both rigorous and intimate—a quiet homage to the generational histories of labor, from agrarian toil to domestic handiwork. The delicate, rhythmic gestures across her surfaces serve as visual echoes of time and memory, reflecting an almost monastic dedication to process and materiality. Each graphite mark maps time and effort, acting as both a record of labor and a meditation on permanence and impermanence. In her work, the refinement of form coexists with the raw physicality of process, creating a tension between the sacred and the everyday, the historic and the contemporary.

Alison Hall (b. 1980, Martinsville, VA) received her BFA from Hollins University and later completed her MFA at American University. Her work has been exhibited widely, most recently serving as the subject of a 2024 solo exhibition, A ballad (make it soft, make it low) at Kate Werble Gallery in New York, NY. She has additionally been showcased at SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, NC, PFA Gallery in Washington, D.C., Galerie Gisela Clement in Bonn, DE, Stephane Simoens Contemporary Fine Art in Knokke, BE, Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, VA, and Robischon Gallery in Denver, CO. Hall’s work has additionally been reviewed in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and Steven Alexander Journal. She is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship in Drawing (2011) and a Bethesda Painting Award (2011). She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and Martinsville, VA.