Allyson Montana

Allyson Montana is an abstract painter and mixed media artist working in the New York City area. Allyson’s work explores unwritten stories from the archaeological past. The content of Allyson’s art plays with the metaphor of interpretation, narrative, and authorship. Allyson’s background in art history, ancient history, and East Asian languages greatly informs her work. She has participated in Fulbright fellowships to study art history in Japan, India, and Sri Lanka, as well as fellowships in Korea, Taiwan, and China. Allyson teaches drawing, painting, visual culture, and artist life story at Teachers College, Columbia University where she is a doctoral candidate and fellow in the Art & Art Education prigram.

My work explores stories from the unwritten past. In many cases, thousands of years and layers of earth separate us from the original makers of the archaeological record, yet an invisible thread connects us through symbols. Interpreting these symbols can be the realm of creativity, but also be the cause of great misunderstanding. Faced with little information, it can be tempting to assign narrative to the unknown. Because the archaeological record is ahistorical, it can become a mirror of our own culture, bias, and folly. 

It can be hard to sit with silence and uncertainty because the human brain is predisposed to the construction of stories. I am interested in non-linear histories, vacancies in timelines, and what happens when we allow the absence of a dominant plot line to take center stage in diegesis. The challenge today lies not in storytelling but in listening deeply to the stories that we tell.

To represent stratigraphy, I layer paint, media and sand on canvas. Between layers I made marks and inscribed messages. The meaning of these messages is obscured by the materials and unremembered by me. At times, symbols may appear from distant archaeological sites as silent reminders of our profound need to story the past. The many layers of media, paint and collected materials are meant to obfuscate the meaning over time, and yet individual marks and images find their way through the layers.

Often it is easy to focus on how time and space highlight differences in individuals. Ultimately, deep within, we are the same. In my artwork, research, and teaching, I think deeply about the similarities between people, rather than our differences. 

Please see: https://www.allysonmontana.com...

New York

USA