Bucks County
Pennsylvania Artist

Her marvelous watercolors are a joyous expression of the indelible mark nature continues to forge on her soul. The alert colors and intricate flowing lines generate a complexity that never dissolves under the weight of intertwining and multiplying designs. There is an undisturbed enchantment within that beckons the viewer to linger and dream. You could be gazing into a magical stream or a euphoric sky. Turn the paintings in any direction and they continue to speak.

Her creative process is analogous to jazz improvisers who bravely jump into the unknown without maps or guiding coordinates. Bessesdotter’s bottomless talent and refined instinct navigate as she develops these very organic creations. Deep concentration opens into timelessness while she transforms diverse materials into resplendent artifacts.

...Steven Piccione Lehigh Valley Style

Bio

Bessesdotter is a Bucks County born painter and quilter. As a Pennsylvania native her affinity for quilting comes naturally. She has a deep regard for the traditional form even as she pushes into new and innovative realms. The marriage between painting, printmaking, design and quilting lends itself to Bessesdotter interpreting herself in a colorful and extraordinarily detailed and imaginative style to create resplendent artifacts.

Alison Bessesdotter grew up along the banks of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania in a family of artists and musicians. Currently, Bessesdotter is an ArtsQuest Resident Artist at the Banana Factory in studio in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 

Alison has been by turns a beekeeper, an award winning pie maker, an equestrienne, a painter, printmaker, and flower farmer to name some of her complex and unusual pursuits. An aficionado of the doberman, pit bull, rough coat collie and the toy pug, Bessesdotter is rarely seen without a dog by her side.

The artists’ respect for the traditional with an iconoclastic streak and leads her to hang her work in galleries and non-traditional spaces. Her style has been described as improvisational: worlds of magic, euphoria and enchantment. Alison’s paintings, prints and quilts are currently in private and corporate collections.

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Stratum 22 - detail

Statement

Art for me is a consuming performance, a transmutation of chemicals, minerals, biological materials and myself, converting them into curious objects that we display and observe. I am kinetic by nature and spend my days and nights deep in imaginative states or creating. My pieces are intuitive experiences, sometimes other-worldly themes and how we are hard wired to have a belief in something—love, a noble cause, science, nature, even the self. ​