b. 1987 lives and works in Fresno, CA.

Allyson Darakjian is a multidisciplinary artist investigating and utilizing her personal internal memories as “texts,” curious about how memory might be indexed within the body. She uses an interdisciplinary approach with specific interest in performance, psychoanalysis, and painting to explore how intuitive marks and gestures expressed with her body reinterpret or embody the emotion of memories. Allyson collapses seemingly oppositional categories of literature (Children’s books and critical theory texts) and images to create an invented visual language incorporating mark making, physical boundaries and unique compositional rules.

Her practice is curious about the limitations of understanding of text and language in the 2D plane of painting as well as performance. Currently her work explores the maternal body as a liminal space between mother and other, a hyper-bodied, hybrid entity that is beings contained in one. She is active in a range of fields including performance, painting, writing, and installation.

Allyson has a BA in studio art from Westmont College and a MA in Theology and Culture with an emphasis in visual art from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. She recently received her MFA in interdisciplinary arts from the University of Nevada Reno. She has served as a curatorial assistant and a resident artist to the Cascadia Residency through Fuller Seminary Northwest as well as a creative coach and resident artist for the Inhabit Arts Collaborative in Fresno, California. Allyson’s work as a creative coach is an extension of her art (and perhaps even her motherhood) practice with a focus on prioritizing, engaging, and examining individual impulses to help work through emotional, artistic, and creative blocks. Her work has been featured in various illustration and design projects for International Arts Movement, Compagnia Colombari Theater Company, Lit Moon Theater Company, Ratatat Theater Company, Canlis Restaurant, Brehm Center Fuller Northwest, J. Shipley Creative, The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, Westmont College, Good Company Players and Cyclical Publishing. She is the recipient of the Richard Cook Award.

For commissions or questions please contact Allyson here.