Alison Kinnaird MBE - Glass

Alison Kinnaird is an internationally recognised glass artist and musician and in 1997 she received an MBE for her achievements in both of these spheres.

In 2002 with support from a Creative Scotland award she created her award winning installation, Psalmsong, which was on show for a year at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London before returning to Scotland and going on permanent display in the new Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh. 

Alison studied at Edinburgh College of Art and trained in the workshop of Harold Gordon.  She has exhibited widely, completed many commissions, including a portrait for the National Portrait Gallery, and her work is held in collections across the world.  The work Streetwise II was acquired by Dundee Museum & Art Gallery with funding from the National Collecting Scheme for Scotland.

Explaining her inspiration she writes “Glass is a seductively beautiful medium. It has a more versatile nature than any other material. It can be made to resemble stone, water or metal, ceramic, gems or textiles. It can be solid or liquid, transparent or obscure, smooth or textured, heavy or apparently weightless. But it is in partnership with light that glass comes alive. It is then glowing and brilliant, reflective and refractive.

“These qualities suggest the images to me, created by copper wheel engraving, a technique which has remained basically unchanged for two thousand years. Wheel engraved images have a gem like precision and delicacy, and a subtlety of modelling which is impossible with any other technique. It is superlative for detailing the play of muscle and the velvet sheen of skin. The human figure is the main subject in my work. Male or female, they are always unclothed, and thus are not tied to any particular era for fashion. Glass has a timeless quality, technically still liquid, yet frozen motionless for the moment.

“The purity of the medium adds a spiritual dimension - its transparency and mirror surfaces give different insights on the human condition. In more than one way can one 'see through' the images engraved on its surface. Often I use the glass in its character of a window or a doorway, sometimes to suggest isolation or entrapment, sometimes with the figures poised between two worlds. Sometimes they confront an opposite or a mirror image. Glass is a surreal material - it is there and yet not there.

“After thirty years working in this field, I still find excitement and challenges in the potential of the medium, and the messages that it has to offer us today.”

Alison will be talking about her recent work and motivations in ‘Light and Form: A talk by Alison Kinnaird MBE’ on 9 February in ZeST Contemporary Glass Gallery in London. SW6 1RS.  Places are strictly limited. 

In March 2006 she is one of the glass artists taking part in the exhibition ‘The Face – Lost & Found Again’ being held in Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung in Munich, Germany until February 2007.

Later in the year she is running a Cold-working Masterclass at North Lands Creative Glass from 5 to 10 September 2006 and taking part in the annual conference.

Find out more about her work on her website.