Joanna Allen is an English sculptor who works primarily with bronze, marble, clay, and plaster. Her education combines both academic and atelier approaches, having studied under renowned figurative sculptors.

Allen began drawing and working with clay consistently in 2008. During which time, Allen worked instinctively with life models and focused primarily on developing the deep connection between the self and the material, something which has been an integral part of her style ever since.

Midway through her studies, Allen leaned towards formal tutelage at the Barcelona Academy of Art and later at the Florence Academy of Art, further evolving as an artist through intense life drawing and sculpture studies. During this period, Allen began implementing more formal canons such as contour design, proportion, gesture and rhythm.

“This complete immersion period changed my relationship with art into something profoundly deep and permanent," says Allen.

As her practice has developed, her style has evolved to uniquely blend figurative and abstract elements, exploring themes of psychology, behaviour and the interlacing of our conscious and unconscious states.

Allen's experimentation with colour and light adds a rich, multidimensional quality to her work. Highly polished bronzes encourage light-shapes to travel across the surface and reflect the colour and shadows around them. Gradient and transparent patinas allow for the innate quality of bronze to shine through. This deep connection to the material continues in drawing and painting with scratchy, and shakey ink lines on paper; thick, fast strokes, smooshes and sweeps of multilayered oil paint on raw canvas.

“For me, when interweaving my practice of subconscious exploration with these material expressions, whether in drawing, painting or sculpture, it unearths and makes visible something about the complexity of human experience beyond the rational mind.”

Allen's sculptures are featured in museums and private collections across the UK, Europe, and the USA, and have earned recognition from institutions including the Portrait Sculptors Society, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the European Museum of Modern Art.