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Aliisa Hyslop

Aliisa was born in 1957 of Finnish and Scottish parentage. She attended college in Portsmouth, obtaining a BA Hons in Fine Art, Drawing and Painting, in 1981. Since then she has lived and worked in Edinburgh, developing her own particular style of figurative painting with its mix of joy and melancholy. She never uses models - her inspiration is her imagination and experiences. Aliisa describes her paintings as a world somewhere 'between reality and imagination'. Her figures are always large but Aliisa doesn't see them as fat. Many of her images have been made into cards and published by Canns Down Press. Aliisa has also illustrated book covers, which include novels by Sarah Dykins, Sara Sefchovich and a poetry collection by Marinella Frani in Italy.

"I draw and paint intuitively, and I like large shapes and curves. I think perhaps it is because these images are about the soul, which is immense and boundless. My paintings are about feelings, moods and emotions. A feeling or a mood is somehow transformed into a visual context. Emotions are portrayed like poetic imagery, and in a dreamlike way are visual expressions of a deeper experience. Sometimes pictures, like music, express things that cannot be expressed with words. Dreamlike and otherworldly, they are about the world between the physical and spiritual, where physical forms become as soft and tangible as drifting clouds, and feeling take on a physical form. Wit and warmth, pathos and gentle irony - life is a mixture of misery and mirth, and my paintings are the fruits of my life.'

The Strathearn Gallery | 32 West High Street | Crieff | Perthshire | PH7 4DL