Alison was born in 1958 in Canada. She graduated with Honours B.A (Fine Art), a the University of Guelph in 1980, with one under-graduate year of study at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts and L'Universite de Franche-Comte, Besancon, France. She attended Edinburgh College of Art in 1982-83 for Post -Graduate studies.
Alison is a leading realist painter whose imaginative work, starkly surreal in some cases, and beautifully crafted, is highly charged and occasionally disturbing. She is a past President of Visual Arts, Scotland and Vice President of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour.