Alison Blickle (b. 1980) is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work stages a sustained conversation between contemporary femininity, ancient myth, and the ritual imagination. Working across large narrative canvases, tondos, and occasional ceramic elements, she constructs worlds in which female archetypes re-emerge with new agency – reinterpreted rather than merely revived – and set against the pressures and pleasures of the present. Her paintings frequently portray women engaged in ceremonial or supernatural acts, drawing on figures such as the Fates, Medusa, Inanna, and Artemis to illuminate questions of power, autonomy, and social conditioning. What distinguishes Blickle’s practice is not simply the use of myth but the way she folds those stories back into contemporary life, creating cinematic tableaux that feel both timeless and unmistakably of now.
Blickle received her BFA from the California College of the Arts in 2005 and her MFA from Hunter College in 2009, and has since exhibited widely across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Recent solo exhibitions include Offerings to Janus (2024) and the forthcoming Future Ruins (2025) at Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, following earlier presentations such as Medusa (2022), Time’s Up (2021), Killer (2021, Over the Influence, Los Angeles), The Three Fates (2019), and The Myth of Inanna (2018). These projects show the evolution of her visual language – from classical portraiture and earth-toned mysticism to the neon-lit, psychologically charged interiors that have characterised her work since 2021.
Her paintings have been featured in a wide range of group exhibitions, including Body Count (Torrance Art Museum, 2025), Anatomia Humana (Blackbird Rook, London, 2025), Persona (Forest Lawn Museum, 2025), Tone Poem (The Hole, 2024), and Unapologetic WomXn (European Cultural Centre, Venice Biennale, 2024). Earlier exhibitions at institutions such as MOCA Tucson, the Nassau County Museum of Art, Deitch Projects, NYU’s 80WSE Gallery, and major art fairs in Hong Kong, Beijing, Miami, and New York mark her as a painter whose work moves fluidly between independent project spaces and established museum contexts.
Blickle’s work has attracted significant critical attention, appearing in Dazed, Vice, Juxtapoz, Artnet, and The New York Times, and in major publications such as Taschen’s Witchcraft (2022). Most recently she was the cover artist for Arts to Hearts Magazine’s 2025 issue, where she discussed her interest in reclaiming ancient women for a contemporary world – a theme central to her wider practice. Her paintings are held in public and private collections including the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, UCR ARTS at UC Riverside, and The Nixon Collection, London. Blickle continues to develop a mythopoetic, psychologically attuned figurative practice, offering a vital and distinctly personal contribution to contemporary painting.