About

Alison Dibble is a retired ecologist and conservation biologist living in Maine, U.S.A. Her main subjects are landscapes and seascapes which she captures in a loose, impressionistic style. She also paints in the abstract, and she pursues painting figures (people and animals) and still life subjects. She interprets what is in front of her, and she imagines what is not.

Dibble has been making art all her life. Indeed her first teacher was her mother, Barbara Coan, a painter, who taught her to paint. As a teenager she attended a summer program at the Boston Museum of Fine Art School, then earned a B.A. in English Literature with an Art Minor at Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY. She married and raised a family, and also earned her M.S. in Botany and Ph.D. in Plant Science at the University of Maine, Orono. She worked as an ecologist for 30 years, researching rare plants, forest fire fuels and invasive plants, forest ecology, and pollinators especially native bees of Maine. She retired in 2021.

Her art teachers have included not only her mother Barbara Coan, but also Roberta Griffith, Louise Bourne, Frank Sullivan, Amy Hosa, Donald Demers, Jerry Rose, Tom Curry, Olena Babak, and Marsha Donahue. She can hear the voices of her teachers in her head while she paints. They continue to guide and inspire her.

Alison Dibble’s process begins with concentration on bold design as the premier aspect of the painting. She often starts with brief sketches and value studies to work out what she wants the painting to say. It’s about an emotion…but how to translate an emotion into the language of paint? Once she has her ideas worked out (this may or may not involve a detailed sketch), then comes color! She makes a plan for a limited palette (a handful of colors), then she selects a huge brush and starts in with the paint. In many cases she applies midvalues first, then dark darks, while she is paying attention to the shapes. Light values are later, because white paint can contaminate the other colors and lead to chalkiness. She might add a few flourishes with a smaller brush.

Alison paints quickly. Time is suspended, yet briskness is key to overcoming her compulsion to bore down on portraying the fine details. She seeks to mentally adjust to this new “thing” that she is bringing into the world — will she like it? Maybe not! But continue anyway. She stands back 25 feet from the painting, squints to check values. She might tweak it a bit. Usually the painting is well developed in a short time, but to that time she would add her years of study, her daily observations, her restraint regarding details, and her determined self reflection that are part of the experience poured into that one painting.

She might think of the painting as mostly completed, but is it ready for the world to see? Sometimes it takes her years (yes, YEARS, even decades!) before she will consider a piece of her art “finished”. She has to think about it, sneak up on it, put it in dim light indoors, take it out in the dooryard to see it in full sun, look at it through a mirror as she stands with her back to it. She has to squint at it, and think again, over and over. Every part of the canvas must be considered. This examination and rumination is a crucial part of her process. Most of what she makes never sees any audience except the artist herself and perhaps a few other artists who may be in her critique circle. Oh, and her supportive spouse, who might have to step around all this art while he is trying to get from one part of the house to another.

It is Alison’s particular pleasure to share the best of her art with the world through this web page. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of her paintings goes to nonprofits in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Mongolia, or in eastern Cuba. A special thank you to friends who partner with her in these endeavors; we are making a difference.