Biography
Alyson Hunter was born in 1948 in Auckland, New Zealand, her parents having travelled from Sydney, Australia, to set up the Auckland factory branch of James Steadman Henderson.
Alyson attended Elam Art School Auckland University, with her twin sister Alexis, also an artist, studying painting under Colin McCahon. 1966-69.
In 1969 she traveled to London attending Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art. Her photo-etchings were bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Council while still a student.
With her partner Darcy Lange she moved to the East End of London, where they made film and photographic work, also travelling to Birmingham and Bradford, and Moron de la Frontera in Andalucia, Spain, where her sister Linley still lives.
After college Alyson worked at lslington Studios set up by Hugh Stoneman, who she married in 1974. lslington Studios was used by 300 international print-makers and had six full time printers.
Alyson opened the lslington Graphics Gallery in the shop premises in Balls Pond Road, to promote photography in printmaking. Islington Studio became Stoneman Graphics having moved to Earlham street, Covent Garden.
Alyson bought North Corner, in Newlyn, the Cornwall painting studio of Dod Proctor, from the Proctor family and Cornwall has featured in her artwork and poetry since the 70s.
In 1979 she traveled throughout America with Adrian Frost, and their daughter Amy was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1981. Alyson then moved to Sydney, Australia, where she exhibited at the Robin Gibson Gallery.
Moving back to New York she became Master Printer in Robert Blackwood's Printmaking Workshop, and then travelled back to California as Visiting Professor in Drawing, teaching with Roland Peterson and Wayne Thiebaud in 1981 and 1983..
In 1986 Alyson moved back to London where she made Photo-etchings of Camden and Soho, until she gave up the process in 1996 becase of fears about the chemicals used in photo-etching.
Throughout the 1990s she sold paintings through Rebecca Hossack Gallery, and her photographic portraits of photographers Harry Diamond and Dan Farson are in the National Portrait Gallery.
Her poetry books are published under the titles 'A Sense of Space,' 'The Painted Sailor,' and 'Nightbus'.
Alyson started making sculpture again and used pewter: this was used to make a 2000 ashtray for the Colony Room Club. Model Damian Hurst.
Photopolymer Gravure was the print medium she tried out making a new set of pictures of Soho and Denmark Street.
Alyson lives in Margate and works from her studio in The Margate School, an Independent Liberal Art School.