About
Professor Fae Brauer, writing for the catalogue, Aura, 2021:
From the nineteenth and twentieth century artists who worked with sensory spiritual, occultist and magnetic receptivity such as Houghton, Klint, Hélène Smith (Catherine-Elise Müller) and Madge Gill to such magnetists and mesmerists as Franz Anton Mesmer in the eighteenth century, Charles Dickens and John Elliotson at University College Hospital and the London Mesmeric Infirmary in the nineteenth century, Jules Bois, Albert de Rochas plus Hector and Henri Durville in Paris in the twentieth century to Susan Hiller, Kate Mitchell, Melissa Alley and Degard in the twenty-first century, these explorations provide new understandings of “felt energies” and “superconsciousness”. These “felt energies” can entail the dark and deep energies of trauma. This is demonstrated by the loss of love ones that motivated Georgiana Houghton and so many other Victorian Spiritists and Mesmerists women artist, as has been illuminated by Melissa Alley. This has also played a cathartic part in the creation of her own auratic artwork.
The shock of the loss of her son, Dyllan, to cot death in 2006 felt like, in Melissa Alley’s words, “an atomic bomb”. Retreating to her studio, cathartically she made paintings out of grief, which were free flowing without conscious intervention. As her lost son emerged in her artwork, alongside people and creatures from another plane, Melissa Alley felt that she was communing with Dyllan’s spirit and giving form to the “unseen”. This was a skill that she was then able to hone in order to create auto-trance portraits. Working with these energies was enhanced by her becoming a mesmerist enabling her to use the transformative powers of trance to heal others mentally and physically. “I would flow easily and fluidly between states as I delved into the subconscious and the spiritual, visualizing pictures and colours as I worked with clients’ auras and the seemingly immaterial which for me was very tangible”, she recalls. “All of these practices have enhanced my paintings, whether they be auto-trance portraits of a well-to-do Victorian woman from Scarborough, a 1920’s foundry employee from Deptford or a contemporary mother of two from Hampshire. Once I connected with their energetic traces, I could materialise their lives in paint.” In feeling and absorbing these energies across the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries in a mesmeric trance state filled with auratic visions, Melissa Alley has been able to travel back and forth in time and create a distinctive Janus-faced art practice. From her twenty-first century perspective, she has then been able to explore a dialogue with time, magnetic forces, felt energies and auratic visions.
In Melissa’s words:
I have trained myself to clear my mind to enter into a trance state to allow my paintings to materialise from the subconscious. Through this process I was finding that people and animals kept appearing in my paintings without me consciously creating them. I trained with a medium for ten years, in what is known as a psychic circle. Guests, known as “sitters” would come on a weekly basis to seek information from the trainee mediums and I learnt to make drawings, otherwise known as “auragraphs”. By getting myself out of the way I allow my “spirit guide” (or whatever it may be) to guide my hand and thoughts. The colours, images and positions of elements are the vocabulary that is used to give information on the sitter and I am able to talk to him or her about what the piece reveals about them.
In my studio I have been making series of paintings that I call Auto-Trance Portraits. I work in acrylic on wood or paper, and get into my flow “tuning into” one individual. Sometimes it can be through a piece of paper that they have written on, like in the body of work for Deptford Stories, other times it could be through a photograph of them, even antique photos, such as for Apartment and other recent paintings, and sometimes it is through just thinking about them. The paintings tend to be an encapsulation of the individual’s life with details emerging through patient observation and benefitting from being re-visited with an open mind.
I attended weekly classes held by the visionary artist, Cecil Collins. He and Mark Tobey had created a technique that encouraged the abandonment of any conscious control to allow chance and natural expression. I found the simultaneous use of both hands in his process very useful as it trained both sides of the brain – co-operate, creating a harmonious union of the analytical and intuitive.
The way I make my paintings is influenced by that training. Now I seek to play with the interface between figuration and abstraction, coming in and out of focus through rhythm, colour, shape and texture. The work is never fixed, but in a state of flux. If the viewer relaxes their mind, marks and gestures can describe a face, or a profile, animal or creature. The paintings are catalysts that stimulate the subconscious mind to reveal archetypes, and yet, in a different state of mind, different things can appear. The images are not pre-conceived, I get into my rhythm, applying colour and brushstrokes, aiming to express the intuitive and spontaneous.
The fact that I am also a therapist, with that insight and focus on transformation may be relevant. For a person is not only physical (figurative and of the surface, the conscious), but also of the abstract (subconscious), so there is a fusion between conscious and sub-conscious. I find that dialogue very engaging as it continuously creates opportunities for exploration and discovery. The Colour and Curve paintings (1994-2006) tried to capture the Sacred Feminine and veered more towards figuration. The Loss series (2006-2007) went further into the subconscious by letting go of having to pin anything down (in a figurative sense) in order to commune with “the other” (whatever that may be) and the Manifestation paintings were a continuation of that process. The Auto Trance paintings are where I connect to particular people or things and subsequently the marks and colours describe their story.
CV
Chronology:
2020-22 Turps Banana Offsite Program
2014 Qualified as a Professional Mesmerist
2012-2014 - Trained in mesmerism
2007-18 Training with a Medium
2002 - Professional Hypnotherapist
1997-2000 Teaching part-time from her studio in London
1982 - Improvisational singing and performance
1988-99 Part-time assistant at the art gallery, England & Co, London
1985-89 Studied with the artist, Cecil Collins
1983-86 Central St Martins, Fine Art, Painting B.A.
1982-83 Wimbledon School of Art, London
1962 Born London
Publications:
Aura catalogue with essay by Professor Fay Brauer, 2021
Empire II catalogue, 2017
In Celebration of Cecil Collins: Visionary Artist and Educator, compiled by Nomi Rowe, Tate Publications, 2008
Colour and Curve, catalogue for solo exhibition with Benjamin C. Hargreaves at The Air Gallery.
The Dictionary of Artists in Britain Since 1945 by David Buckman, 1998 & 2006
Vogue Italia (Casa n.6) Dec 2000
London Group Open, 2009
Reviews:
The Art Newspaper by Louisa Buck for Deptford Stories, 2014
Time Out by Sarah Kent for DIY, Sept 6-13 2000 No.1568
Galleries Magazine by Nicholas Usherwood for Colour & Curve, April 2000
What’s On by John Coleman for DIY, Sept 6-13 2000
Metro by Claire Allfree for DIY, Aug 24 2000
Collections:
Work held in collections in USA: New York, Houston, Long Island, San Francisco;
Australia, England and Scotland.
Performances:
2025 Auragraph Drawings for ‘The Acoustic Commons of the East Atlantic
Flyway: Migratory songbirds arrive in Cloudesley Square - Performance Event’
2024 Mesmerism: Creative Flow for How Soon is Now, Shoreditch
2019 Drawing Out, live drawings for Coming Good: Come Hell or High Water, Waterloo Festival
2018 Songs of the Underdog, Embracing the Underdog, Q-Park, China Town, London
2017 Vortex, Crash, Q Park, Cavendish Square, Level -3
2014 The Sleeping Boy of Deptford, Deptford Stories, Anthology Deptford Foundry, London
Solo Exhibitions:
2015 FUSION, An exhibition of paintings and installations at Cinnamon Soho
2014 Inner Visions at Mordern Hall Park
2000 Colour and Curve, Benjamin C. Hargreaves at The Air Gallery, London
1999 The River and the Figure, Putney Library
1998 Body in Mind, Traditional Acupuncture Centre, London
1996 The River at Putney, Putney Library, London
Two Person Exhibitions:
2021 Aura 2, The Gallery at Brook Street, London
2018 Soul Sessions with Paul Tecklenberg, St John’s on Bethnal Green
2001 Multiple Choice with Paul Tecklenberg, Spitz Gallery, London
2000 Constellation, with Paul Tecklenberg, House gallery, Camberwell
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2025 Tranceducers (curated by Vivienne Roberts), GPS Gallery, London
Homing, Safehouse 1, Peckham, London (exhibiting with Rosey Prince, Blue Pheonix and Kate Burnett)
2024 How Soon is Now, Baker Howard Contemporary, Shoreditch
2022 Turps Offsite Program Exhibition
2021 Aura, Nolia’s Gallery, London
2021 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition selected by Eva Rothschild and Vanessa Jackson
All The Same Age at Different Times, Fitzrovia Gallery, London
2020 Imperfectum, The Cello Factory, London, curated by Vanya Balogh
2019 Minuscule, Venice Biennale, curated by Vanya Balogh
Transforming Being, Waterloo Festival, Performance
Fly By Night, 100 years Gallery, London
Minuscule Part 2, Cross Lane Projects, Cumbria, curated by Vanya Balogh
2018 Soul Sessions, St John’s Church, Bethnal Green, (Drawings Performance & Sound Piece)
The Apartment 11, A1 Studios, Bow Arts Trust, London
Embracing the Underdog, Q Park, China Town (Performance)
Protocol, Q Park, Cavendish Square, Level -3
2017 Empire II, Venice Biennale, 2 minute film: https://vimeo.com/216498813
Crash, Q Park, Cavendish Square, Level -3,
ASC Open Studios, Chaplin House, London
2016 Silent Movies, Cavendish Square, Q Park Level -3
2015 The Apartment, A1 Studios, Bow Arts Trust, London
2014 Deptford Stories, Anthology J. Stone & Co Foundry, London (Paintings and Performance)
2013 The Watercolour Art Fair, London
The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London
2012 Summer Exhibition, The Royal Academy of Arts, London
400 Women, Sugar City, Amsterdam
2011 Birdbrain, a collaboration with Catherine Clover, Soundfjord, London;
Emerson Galerie, Berlin, Germany and Screenspace, Melbourne, Australia
400 Women, Edinburgh Festival.
2010 400 Women, London
Luck of the Draw, Diverse Works, Houston, USA
Skylark in the Park, London
My Magic Life, curated by Mikey Georgeson, Sartorial Gallery
2009 London Group Open, Cello Factory, London
2008 Six Artists, Karma Gallery, Calcutta, India
2007 Salon Open, D21 Gallery, Leipzig, Germany
2004 Rotunda Gallery, New York, USA May/June Kunsthaus, Zurich
2003 Three Artists at Eastman Gallery, Houston, Texas, USA.
Various Art Fairs with Benjamin C Hargreaves
2002 Art on Paper Fair, Royal College of Art, London
Watercolour Art Fair, Dorchester Hotel, London
Summer & Christmas Exhibition, Benjamin C. Hargreaves. London
Collyer-Bristow Christmas Exhibition, London
2001 Art on Paper Fair, Royal College of Art, London
Multiple Choice, The Spitz Gallery, London
Watercolour Art Fair, Dorchester Hotel, London
Summer & Christmas Exhibition, Benjamin C. Hargreaves. London
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London
2000 DIY-19 Variations on the theme of wallpaper, Co-Curated by Alley, made “Critics’ Choice” and top 10 for 2000 in Time Out magazine.
Constellation, The House Gallery, London
Summer & Christmas Exhibitions, Benjamin C Hargreaves
Various Art Fairs with Benjamin C Hargreaves
1999 Estate, Osterley Park House, Middlesex, exhibiting with Sarah Sparkes, Paul Tecklenberg & Peter Jones
Bankside Browser, An Archive, Tate Gallery, Bankside, London
Various Art Fairs with Benjamin C Hargreaves
ASC Open Studios, Camberwell Arts Week
Summer & Christmas Exhibitions with Benjamin C Hargreaves
1998 Blue, Sun & Doves, London.
Camberwell Open, Sun & Doves, London.
ASC Open Studios (organised by Melissa) for Camberwell Arts Week.
Various Art Fairs with Benjamin C Hargreaves.
Summer & Christmas Exhibitions with Benjamin C Hargreaves.
Christmas Open Studios, ASC Studios.
1997 Watercolour Art Fair, Dorchester Hotel, London.
Various Art Fairs with Benjamin C Hargreaves.
ASC Open Studio, Camberwell Arts Week, London.
Christmas Open Studios, ASC Studios.
Christmas Exhibition with Benjamin C Hargreaves.
1996 Whitechapel Open Studios, Stanworth St. London.
Christmas Exhibition, England & Co., London.
Christmas Exhibition with Benjamin C Hargreaves.
1994 Open Studios, Warrior Studios, London.
1987 The Day Book, travelling exhbition organised by Andrew Jones.
1985 Paperworks, Battersea Arts Centre, London.
