Wandering through the almost 500 exhibits at the Manchester Open Exhibition at HOME, my eye was caught by a tiny portrait painted by Heather Alderson. Amidst the eclectic visual noise of the exhibition, something (almost subliminally) caught my attention. I walked past, I walked around, but repeatedly came back to the small canvas. A portrait that was just a glimpse at something deeper. Art is always intriguing. Sometimes it drags you back again and again. 

 

I wanted to find out more about Heather Alderson, her work and the story behind the beautifully painted, stripped back portrait. And so a Tuesday morning call in to Rogue Studios, where Heather works. What I found was a quiet, self-effacing artist who herself is searching for answers. A prerequisite of art in whatever form. 

 

I hadn’t met Heather before and so the first minutes were finding out about her background, how she came to be based in the Openshaw studios. Originally from Padiham, near Burnley, her mum and dad, she told me, were supportive when she went to Liverpool Poly in the 80s…but presumed that she’d eventually find her true direction in life. Heather concentrated at first on ceramics and 3D work, but gradually took the painting path and, after graduating in 1991, stayed in Liverpool for 12 years before moving to London, where she took studio space. Not just a temporary move, she moved back to Manchester after 15 years, painting and drawing skills honed.

 

Now I was intrigued by the unfinished work, experimental sketches and sparingly painted complete work on walls, propped up on the floor, on her DIY wall easel – on my visit carrying an unfinished painting of a tree, alongside two other similar canvases in progress. Her work is primarily figurative but, she explained, “My mum is ill and in the tangle which is dementia. Maybe the tangle of tree branches reflects that. I’m not sure.” But then part of the beauty of Heather’s paintings and drawings is that she is (my opinion) constantly searching for solutions to visual questions. And she poses such vibrant visual questions with her almost sketched in paintings: figures half or part completed. Suggesting rather than explaining. One stripped back painting is of three dark figures on – I presume – a beach. What drama is happening between them in that moment? Is it a playful scene or a threatening scene?

 

Heather muses on a long term project which she is germinating. And that is to create a series of paintings commenting on the long term view of ‘politics.’ There is a lamp lit scene of figures huddled around a table. The only clue is the epaulette on a figure tucked into the shadows. A Nazi epaulette, the scene Chamberlain’s ill fated signing of the peace accord between Britain and Germany. ‘Peace for our time.’ Around Heather’s studio are study sketches of infamous historical politicians which will, I’m sure, be woven into the tableaux of paintings at some future date.

 

But back to the portrait that first intrigued me. And it was a video image that had captured Heather’s imagination. The sketched in face is that of singer Shara Nelson and the video for Massive Attack’s ‘Unfinished Symphony.’ “Shara’s face in the video just caught my attention. I looked back again and again.” (As had I at HOME.) “In the video she is walking defiantly down a neighbourhood street, with people in the background acting out mini, day to day dramas. She walks through defiantly. But two lines in the song mean so much to me. ‘You’re the book that I have opened. And now I’ve got to know much more.’”

 

It's not very often that I find the answer to a question in art that I am looking for. The answer to the question I asked myself, when I kept returning to that small portrait, was answered completely and definitively. Heather will, I know, keep searching for her own answers in the art that she creates so beautifully and hauntingly. 

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