Born in New York City, with a somewhat nomadic childhood beginning in Armonk, New York, and continuing through Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah and Connecticut, Alisonn has enjoyed a life-long love of animals. Primarily self-taught, Alisonn has drawn inspiration from the work of family friend, Doris Bryant, of Sharon, Massachusetts, whose work featuring horses and dogs in pastel was so realistic one coul
d expect the subjects to feel warm, were they to be touched, their liquid eyes expressive, noses wet. “I decided I had to try to create that illusion too,” says Alisonn and judging by her many delighted clients, she seems to be succeeding. Alisonn was able to count instructors Nora Addy Drake and Robert DeVoe among her treasured mentors and had benefit of a year of Boston Museum School before the fates set her off to study at her own pace. Her pastel work has been seen on the cover of the American Kennel Gazette (Dec 1982), as pen and ink studies, also in the Gazette, (July and August 1991) which brought a Maxwell Medallion from Dog Writer’s Assn of America for illustration. Several happy wins and placements in oil painting and pastel at Dog Fancier’s Club art competitions in New York brought her to the attention of William Secord,of William Secord Gallery, Inc. who included her in an exhibit, Contemporary Dogs, during Westminster of 1995 and has shown her work ever since. For the last twenty years she has been busy with portrait commissions and training and competing her dogs for AKC Agility competition.
