Whalen, Alissa

Alissa Whalen was born in Toronto, Ontario. Between 1983 and 1991, she studied pottery, wheel throwing and hand-building, part-time in Pickering, Ontario. In 1998, she began selling a variety of functional tableware, garden and wall art. Whalen participated in numerous outdoor and indoor art shows and displayed her work on artist studio tours and in co-op art galleries in Southern Ontario until 2013. Whalen transitioned to working with acrylic paint in 2014. She studied with Martha Johnson and Kathryn Bemrose in Toronto, Ontario, concentrating on impressionistic themed paintings. During the last 8 years, she has shown her paintings at the Sudbury Art Club Show and One Sky Gallery Boutique in Sudbury, Ontario. Most recently, Whalen moved towards abstract expressionism and mixed media artwork. In May, 2024 Whalen participated and showed her abstract art in “A Matter of Time” for emerging artists, curated by Sasha Court and presented in Dartmouth, NS. Whalen has participated in the Pre-Shrunk 2025 show curated by Argyle Fine Art and currently has work displayed at the Teichert Gallery in Halifax, NS.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a visual artist working primarily in abstract expressionism. When I paint, I react to what is happening immediately on the surface of my work. I experiment by making intuitive decisions in the moment. I enjoy building layers of mixed media, acrylic paint, sometimes collage or ink, adding various marks with water-soluble crayons and pencils. I add and remove paint, scrape and dab, spontaneously creating a history of textures, resulting in a rich visual surface.

I also create impressionistic mixed media florals with acrylic paint. By using many different papers, some of which are hand made, as a base, the work develops into an interesting, fun and light-hearted impressionistic floral arrangement in a vase. I am drawn towards working with both hands: making, tearing, gluing, painting, scraping, etc. I am a former potter, and thus the physicality of creating using both arms, hands and all digits comes naturally and instinctively. I aspire to paint larger canvases to further experience the freedom of dual-hand mark making and painting.