Alison Watt: Phantom

British artist Alison Watt (b. 1965) creates monumental paintings depicting richly draped fabric. These canvases show closely cropped folds, gathers, tucks, and creases––all sensuously developed from a selective palette of white, grey, burnt sienna, cadmium red, and yellow.

The National Gallery’s seventh Associate Artist, Watt worked in a studio near the permanent collection. This proximity to masterpieces she has long admired concentrated her focus on the tradition of drapery in western art and inspired her dramatically abstracted reinterpretations. Alison Watt: Phantom, a beautifully designed and illustrated book, presents her most recent series of powerful, large-scale paintings. In an essay featuring photographs of Watt at work in the gallery studio, Colin Wiggins reviews the artist’s creative process. Also included is a new piece written by celebrated Scottish poet Don Paterson that responds to these works.

Don Paterson is a renowned poet, writer, and musician. Colin Wiggins is Deputy Head of Education at the National Gallery, London. He is the author of numerous books, including Leon Kossoff: Drawing from Painting, Tom Hunter: Living in Hell and Other Stories, and Ron Mueck, all distributed by Yale.