Alison Donaldson's Artistry

Alison Donaldson is a Houston-based artist whose practice reinterprets the tradition of weaving through the medium of paper. A self-taught artist, she works intuitively, allowing each piece to evolve through an organic, responsive process. Her work is shaped by early memories of watching her mother’s imaginative use of materials - a formative experience that instilled a fascination with pattern, repetition, and the quiet discipline of making.

 

Alison begins by creating original painted surfaces in acrylic, ink, oil pastel, and other mixed media. She then deconstructs these paintings through tearing and cutting before intuitively reconstructing the fragments into intricate paper weavings and contemporary collages. Through repetition, fragmentation, and reassembly, her work explores connection, memory, transformation, and the ways individual elements take on new meaning through proximity.

 

Her process embraces both control and unpredictability. Marks and compositions that begin as one thing are disrupted and reconsidered, allowing unexpected relationships to emerge. The physical act of painting, deconstructing, and rebuilding is integral to the work, creating pieces that retain evidence of their past while becoming something entirely new.
 

Alison works from her studio at Silver Street Studios on the Sawyer Yards campus in Houston. She has studied collage and assemblage at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her work has been exhibited at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and in juried and group exhibitions throughout Texas, and is held in private and corporate collections, including UTHealth Houston. She holds a degree from Texas A&M University and studied art history in Italy, an experience that continues to inform her appreciation for material, history, and the evolution of artistic traditions.​