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Figure and portrait painter, she studied at Glasgow School of Art, 1983–7, graduating with a first-class honours degree in drawing and painting. She completed a postgraduate postgraduate year in 1988, being highly commended. Alison Watt came into national prominence in 1987 when she won the John Player Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery with her self-portrait with a teacup on her head. This produced a commission to paint HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, completed in 1989. Watt was one of the group of outstanding figurative painters who emerged from Glasgow in the 1980s. Her portraits and figure studies were meticulously crafted in the manner of James Cowie or Ingres, cool, quirky and with an underlying mischief. Among her other commissions were work for EMI Records, The Observer and Mirror Group Newspapers.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)


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