Alice Barden is based in Kettering, Northamptonshire. She studied on the BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting and Drawing Course at the University of Northampton, achieving a first-class degree in 2026.
She studies various natural materials capturing rich textures and ranging values within her greyscale artwork. Working from primary sourced photographs she reconfigures the images she selects into drawings on paper, using graphite pencils and other tools like paper stumps and paintbrushes for graphite application. Her image selection and refinement is important, finding areas of nature that stand out to her. She frequently goes through a selective cropping process to find sections of nature to work from, often presenting as an ‘abstracted landscape’. Her pencil drawings range from small scale series works to larger standalone subject pieces.
Artist Statement:
My drawing-based practice focuses on the complexity and visual curiosities of the natural world, through the study of flora and natural resources. I intend to represent their textural appeal and find the abstracted within the natural.
I focus on showing textures through marks and tone by investing graphite into the surface. My practice carries themes of individuality, memory, the disruption and the takeover of nature onto man-made elements and physical and digital breakdown.
The influence for my work is the nature around me. I’m captured by certain spaces, envisioning how I could recreate and reconfigure the textures, shapes and forms I see which capture my eye.
I work from primary source photographs taken of aspects of nature. Photos allow me to not only recreate, but also manipulate a landscape. I look closely at certain areas, refine my focus and block my view of the rest of the image to concentrate on the chosen section. This image generation method is a crucial technique to my practice; it’s behind all of my image selection. Seeing spaces under closer investigation often make the scene harder to recognise, distorting and degrading the image into scenes which are on the edge of unrecognisable abstract
One of her degree Pieces ‘Borrowed Green, Venice’ was listed on the 2026 Jacksons Art Prize Extended Longlist.