With representation in both Australia and the USA, Ali McNabney-Stevens’ works aim to explore the links between her experiences and artistic practice by recollecting nostalgic flashes of her past and joining them with the here and now. Working at varying scales, for the artist, time is irrelevant and following the links and ties to get to the elusive perfect ending is all that matters. The exploration of memories coupled with the visual revisiting of unassuming day-to-day happenings has brought an expressive freedom to Ali’s work. Ali uses the directness and urgency of drawing in sketchbooks en plein air as a way of responding with spontaneity in the moment moving on to use memory and feeling to build the work in her studio. 

Ali’s principal body of work provides a lineal view into the artist’s life story page by page whilst she searches for her imagery unashamedly getting lost in thought. Layers of memory are delicately articulated through oil and pastel and woven together with the artist’s characteristically painterly marks. The paintings draw physical reference from still life and landscape whilst the narrative expels lifecycle observations of a deep, raw and mulled beauty. The works are becoming, as is the artist. Her desire to translate, without exactness and share the beauty of what she sees and remembers is, she hopes, a language without words.

Ali earned her Honours degree in Design and Art History from Edinburgh College of Art, with further fine art studies at London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. She consistently displays her pedigree with an impressive body of work which occupies the space between realism and abstraction.