Tony Allain

Award winning painter, instructor and author Tony Allain has been painting for over 40 years. A self-taught painter of colour, light and movement with a complete understanding of his surroundings. Born and raised on Guernsey in the Channel Islands he moved to paint and live in Cornwall, UK to capture the unique clarity of light living on the peninsular of the West Country. Tony has exhibited extensively over the years, his work can be found in many leading galleries as well as private and corporate collections worldwide, including the Maritime Museum, Guernsey and Queen Mary 2, Cunard Ocean Liner. He has exhibited with The Pastel Society of America in New York, the Royal Society of Marine Artists, London, The International Pastel Exhibition, Suzhou, China and the Pastel Society, Mall Galleries, London. A move to New Zealand in 2006 proved to be a turning point in his career with the acceptance as a Master of the Pastel Artists of New Zealand.

His work is regularly featured in The Artist Magazine, the Pastel Journal and the Practique des Arts.
He is a member of the following organisations:

The Pastel Society, London,UK
The Royal Society of Marine Artists, London, UK
The Pastel Society of America
The International Association of Pastel Societies.
The Pastel Society of the West Coast.
The Red Rocks Pastel Society
The German Pastel Society

Tony now lives and works from his studio in Scotland.

My passion will always be the landscape, it is why I became an artist. I want to share my vision of the world I see. Colour and light is my motivation for choosing a subject. The light sparkling on the water, the colour reflected in the landscape. I favour the early morning or late afternoon to capture these effects. I think an artist has to allow their surroundings to firstly reveal itself in a way that helps them share their vision with others.

The quest for perfection can bring with it fear of making mistakes and can result in a style which can seem inhibited. I am not interested in pure representation; my work is about responses to the moods and atmospheres generated by landscape, still life or interior. The most precious thing we artist have is our visual language.