Fiona Allen

Fiona Allen is a Derbyshire-based artist working primarily in painting and drawing. Her practice moves between figuration and abstract mark-making, using paint as a way of exploring power, control, love and identity. Her work often begins with something instinctive — an idea, phrase, sketch or feeling — and develops through a process of layering, covering and revealing. Images are allowed to emerge gradually, with earlier marks remaining visible beneath the surface and contributing to the psychological depth of the finished work.

Allen’s paintings have an immediacy and emotional openness that reflects this process of discovery. Working with acrylic, oil and emulsion on canvas, she creates surfaces in which figures and fragments appear to hover between recognition and abstraction. Based in Derbyshire, she is an active part of the region’s artistic community and has exhibited through the Wirksworth Festival and other local platforms. In August 2026 she takes her work to St Ives for Things Unsaid, a joint exhibition with Cornish artist Imogen Rorke at the historic Penwith Gallery, placing her work within one of Britain’s most important centres for modern and contemporary art.