Alison Weld is a very humorous artist.
She is also a very thoughtful artist.

Weld has spoken of “feminizing abstract expressionism.” The gestural vigor of her palette knife-and brush work roots the works in the body; but so do the artificial animal pelts to which the painterly is contrasted . . . Seen from this angle, the uninflected swatches of machine-made fur poke fun at the “all-over” quality for which Abstract Expressionist paintings were praised.

Recently, Weld has moved the faux fur from the wall to the floor, establishing horizontal fields onto which she places found objects: rocks, animal skulls, photographs. Jackson Pollock famously dripped his paint on unstretched canvas lying on the floor, but when he was finished, the work went (back) on the wall. Weld is content to leave her works on the floor, creating tableax that may echo her many years’ experience working in natural history museums.