Allison Gildersleeve’s work is a commitment to painting as both a representational tool and a coded language of mark and gesture. Using the genre of landscape as a structural framework, Gildersleeve twists space and color to upend the notion of nature as a quiet escape.

Gildersleeve produces painterly renderings of dense forests and other natural scenes found on the edge of cultivated or domesticated spaces. Thick layers of colorful paint squeezed directly from a tube and moved around with a palette knife intentionally evoke the styles and methods of Abstract Expressionism. Considering her work “experiential landscapes,” Gildersleeve aims for viewers to recognize the subject, only to have it dissolve before their eyes into a vocabulary of abstract shapes and lines, and then reappear. Her affinity for nature stems from time spent in the woods near her New England home as a child, photographs of which form the basis for her compositions. “When I paint these woods, I want it to feel as if all the stories that took place there are unfolding simultaneously,” she says.

Gildersleeve received her MFA from Bard College in 2004, and her BA from College of William and Mary in 1992. Gildersleeve has exhibited widely across the United States and abroad. Notable solo exhibitions include Olle Nymans Ateljeer (Stockholm, SE), Asya Geisberg Gallery (New York, NY), Auxiliary Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Robischon Gallery (Denver, CO), Cynthia Reeves (Walpole NH), Valley House Gallery (Dallas, TX), The George Gallery (Charleston, SC) and Galleri Andersson/Sandstrom (Stockholm, SE). Selected group exhibitions include Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (NY), CRG Gallery (New York, NY), PS122 (New York, NY), Sharon Arts Center (Peterborough, NH), Dunkers Kulturhus (Helsingberg, SE) and Gana Art Space (Seoul, Korea). Gildersleeve was a 2018-2019 recipient of The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in Brooklyn, NY. She has been awarded a NYFA Fellowship as well as residencies at Yaddo, the Millay Colony, the Vermont Studio Center and most recently, the Liquitex International Research Residency in London. Gildersleeve lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.