Alan Laing is an abstract painter whose work is deeply rooted in the South African landscape — its vast terrain, atmospheric light, and layered histories of occupation and belonging. His large-format paintings are built up through multiple glazes and gestural marks, creating surfaces of considerable luminosity and depth. Laing's Ampersand Fellowship year in New York — a city of very different visual culture and scale — proved a productive challenge to his practice, pushing his work in new directions and expanding his understanding of the international contexts in which his paintings operate.
The Ampersand Fellowship
Since 1997, the Ampersand Foundation has sent more than 300 South African visual artists to a funded residency in Tribeca, New York — connecting them with one of the world's most dynamic art ecosystems.