Educated at Purdue University, Allison Svoboda studied Environmental Design with an emphasis on painting. After 5 years working in a Chicago architecture firm, Allison spent a year traveling through Asia and Africa. Upon returning in 1990, she began a 10 year career as an ethnographic art dealer traveling to Asia, Africa and South America. The enormous energy of nature inspires her work. Allison draws inspiration in nature from the topography of the Himalayan mountains to diving the island reefs of the Maldives to watching Chicago trees try to find their way through the cement. She started working on large scale charcoal drawings after taking several classes and critiques with Chicago based artist Barbara Cooper. Allison has continued her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. She teaches art at Lill Street Art Center and works in her studio in Chicago.


Artist Statement
The flow of water, erosion from wind, the worn limbs of a dead tree inspire my work. This enormous energy in nature which breaks down and builds up pattern and sensuous lines has a never ending fascination for me. The same way a plant grows following the path of least resistance, the quick gestures and simplicity of working with ink allows the law of least effort to prevail. I go between working with charcoal on paper and ink on rice paper or silk. Japanese sumi is actually charcoal put into a block and bound with glue. Creating the ink requires several minutes of grinding the ink block on stone. This meditative pause brings a balance to both my work and life. I do several ink paintings on rice paper until I find something that intrigues me, I then work into the larger silk paintings. My technique with the charcoal drawings is also very fluid as I fill the paper until it’s almost saturated with the charcoal and I am able to lift the charcoal with eraser. Yet the ink gives a more spontaneous experience as there is no lifting of the ink. I allow the ink to move where it wants to go giving a instinctive quality to the work that is hard to achieve in charcoal. The patterns or lines of the work often have multiple inferences. The flow of a tree reaching to the sun has the same movement as a river reaching toward the ocean. Water droplets bind together and become fluid just as arctic ice builds up and melts apart. The dichotomy in our natural world of destruction and growth, light and dark, fear and wonder is very important to my work.