Alan Stones

Alan is a well-established printmaker and painter based in Cumbria’s Eden Valley. Since graduating from St. Martin’s School of Art, London in 1971, he has worked full-time as an artist, making paintings, drawings and original lithographs.

Alan has exhibited widely, including UK-wide touring exhibitions, a residency on the Falkland Islands and, since 2017, three large solo exhibitions in public galleries in Cumbria. Alan is also a Patron of Printfest, the Cumbria-based annual printmaking festival. 

In 1984 Alan won an award from the Gulbenkian Foundation to experiment in printmaking. This was the beginning of a prolific career and he has gone on to make some 130 editions of lithographs. These have been shown in lots of exhibitions in the UK and abroad with many sales worldwide.   In 2018 Alan became a Patron of Printfest, the superb artist-led annual printmaking festival in Ulverston.

“In the 1980s my subject was hill farming in the northern Pennines. These were complex colour lithographs, such as ‘Yoke’, from 1987. My more minimal lithographs came about back in 1996. After several hours struggling to print a flat green colour which was to represent the grasses beneath a hillside I realised that, actually, I wasn’t particularly interested in either the colour or the make-up of that ground. What was exciting me was the line of the hillside and also two gnarled hawthorn trees, independent of each other, but both clinging to the line of the fell.”

“For me, over time, these trees and also the birds of the Cumbrian fells began to feel like metaphors for human endeavour. Eventually the prints were to become arenas in which I could depict people directly. To my surprise metaphorical possibilities remained. For example, a drawing of a fell walker might be seen as a figure on a journey through life but also his/her rucksack could read as the burden they carry on that journey.”

-Alan Stones          

Don’t hesitate to email us on info@cambridgegallery.co.uk or call us on 01223 324222 if you have any questions about specific pieces.

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