Alison Watt (b.1965) was born in Greenock and studied at Glasgow School of Art. Her work first came to public attention in 1987 when she won the National Portrait Gallery’s coveted annual award. Her exquisitely painted canvases continue to edge further towards abstraction yet they still suggest a human presence or absence with a particular concern with the allure of negative space.
In 2014, as part of the Nationwide GENERATION programme of exhibitions, a retrospective exhibition of Watt’s paintings was held at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, and a solo display was presented at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Watt worked in collaboration with Dovecot and commissioner Scottish Opera from 2013, to create the Butterfly tapestry, based on the character of Cio Cio San from Puccinii’s opera Madama Butterfly. The tapestry was installed in the new foyers of the Theatre Royal in Glasgow in 2015.
