Dec 18th, 2009

NAPLES (Dec. 18) – “Ali Clift: Beyond the Big Top” is the next off-site exhibition that The von Liebig Art Center presents at Physicians Regional Healthcare System, 6101 Pine Ridge Road, as part of the hospital’s arts in healing program. The exhibition, on view Dec. 17 to April 6 in the medical center’s atrium lobby, features the vibrant cloth paintings of Naples artist Ali Clift from her early Circus and Still Life Series and her latest Grand Canyon Series, all courtesy of the Pucker Gallery in Boston. There are also three pieces of Zulu pottery. Artwork on display at Physicians Regional Healthcare System helps create a healing environment for patients, visitors and staff. Ten percent of artwork sales benefit the hospital.

ABOUT ALISON CLIFT

Born in 1949 in Nova Scotia where her parents had deep roots, Alison Cann moved to Boston in 1967 to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. There she met her future husband, Jack Clift, an artist and her drawing instructor who would have an enduring influence on her life and career. Since launching her artistic career in the early 1970’s she has signed her work simply as Ali, a name that evokes exciting images of the circus, a rich body of work that won her wide acclaim.

While her first cloth paintings were technically inspired by a picture composed of small bits of cloth she had seen in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the subject of the circus came from memories of her childhood in Cuba where her father managed a large cattle ranch and where she first saw the circus. Even before these earliest cloth paintings, Clift was experimenting with blends of colors, something she borrowed from her teacher, Jack, and which she employed in a printmaking class for an image of a circus performer walking a tightrope. Also embedded in these earliest cloth paintings, and another distinction of her work throughout her career, was Clift’s fascination with the challenge of creating, through illusion, a real sense of space.

In the 32 years since she began her career, Clift has produced approximately 300 cloth paintings, a limited group of pastels, and numerous graphic works. Most of the graphic works, including hand-colored dry point etchings, serigraphs, Iris prints and Chine collé monotypes are closely related to her cloth paintings both in terms of style and of subject matter.

While Clift continues to expand her creative process, each new body of work introduces a notable change in her explorations of cloth as a medium for painting, as well as distinctly different types of subject matter. Because she is an ardent traveler who enthusiastically engages in the places she visits, most of her work in recent years has been, literally and figuratively, fragments of her experiences elsewhere in the world.

The 2001 exhibition, The Texture of Still Life, signaled a transition in subject matter and use of cloth in a broad group of still life paintings, which derived somewhat from her earlier Mexican work. This period also included a group of monochromatic "white" paintings wherein Clift explored a limited and quiet palette of colors in which white was dominant, and she employed a bolder use of cloth. Her travel to Venice during Carnevale in 2003 resulted in a series of new cloth paintings dominated by costumed and masked figures.

Between 1977 and 2006 Clift was featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions. In addition to 17 museum and gallery collections, her works can be found in important private collections throughout the United States and abroad. Her most recent cloth paintings, representing a new and different body of work featuring the Grand Canyon, were exhibited at Pucker Gallery in Boston during the spring of 2007. In the series of very large paintings of the interior of the Canyon, Clift has employed her boldest use of cloth.

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