About
Allen Wittert - Modern Abstract Artist
Blending abstract expressionism with people and places, cartoons and architecture, Allen Wittert transfers his personality to canvas.
Born in Johannesburg, Allen started his art career while still in his teens - drawing and designing for advertising agencies, and supported himself this way for many years. He moved to London in 1994, where he started painting to express the personal and emotional part of his nature that couldn’t be expressed through illustration.
He moved to the United States in 2000, and over the next ten years he exhibited at the top galleries in Connecticut at the time : Ulla Surland Gallery in Fairfield, and the Rockwell galleries in Westport and Wilton. He moved to California in 2015 where he exhibited with the Jennifer Perlmutter gallery in Lafayette, CA for two years, while also showing with Ugallery and Saatchiart online. He currently maintains a studio in Kent in the UK.
Allen comments that ' We all have so much to process visually, and there are so many ways to project our visions, combined with feelings, upbringing, and culture and then I process that and try to make it visible to the best of my ability: I still choose paint and canvas for this translation, although I am creating and enjoying the digital processes as well, I love mashing up images in a software program. Apart from anything else, this is another way to express oneself. My aim is always to inform myself and the viewer as to what I'm feeling; it's kind of like journalling in a way, but my thoughts, when I see them written out I find ridiculous, but when I paint them, it feels right.'
If there is a key theme that informs my work, it's people, how they appear and how they make me feel. This informs all my painting.
Since 2001 his work has become part of many private and corporate collections in the US and the UK, including Integrated Medical of CT, Dahl Architectural Group , Watches.com, the Linda McMahon Foundation, Mark and Theresa Tillinger, and Stamford Health medical group and many more.
Allen works in acrylic and printed media on canvas. He begins with either a charcoal sketch or by painting directly onto the canvas. Using spray bottle and a squeegee, he finds large basic shapes before working into them in more detail, using scraping tools and brushes. Work is often finished with a gloss or semi gloss varnish.