Pamella Allen
Pamella Allen is a Jamaican born, visual artist in practice for over 35 years whose mixed media paintings, works with paper and earthworks have been exhibited in traditional gallery, museum, and non-traditional settings with site specific public art commissions for healing spaces such as Bellevue Hospital for the HHC Art-In-Medicine program, learning & community centers, ACLU Corporate collection and private collections across the globe. Participation as a visiting artist-in- residencies, has taken her to India, throughout Europe, the UK & USA. A largely self-taught expressionist artist, Pamella's work is layered in process. Utilizing traditional acrylic, oil and encaustic painting, printmaking, sculpture, paper making, collage, Installation, photography/video essay & prose to develop her own archetype, a universal language of images inspired by symbolism, indigenous practices and the mystic of the nature that speak to the diversity of her Jamaican/African heritage and lived experiences traveling the world and making art over land and sea. In 2018, Pamella published “The Language of Listening” Image and Prose by Pamella Allen, a proud recipient of the AFriCan Authors Award, the second edition entitled, “The infinite Electric” is scheduled for release in 2025. Pamella is currently living on the North Coast of Jamaica where she is creating a new series of works that tell a story of her relationship with her homeland of Jamaica in kinship with the natural world and her heritage through artifacts found throughout the island and her own archetypal symbolism.
“My works seek to create a space of activation and connection informed by memory, moment, culture, ritual and kinship with our ecoscapes in the cyclical nature of life and death.” Pamella Allen 2025
“Are you Ruby’s Granddaughter? II” By Pamella Allen
16.5 × 16 x .5 inches
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Ply Wood (2025)
USD $1,175
Following “a calling to make art with the youth” while living in Malawi and then while in residency in India; In addition to her continued studio practice, for the past 15 years Pamella has been in practice as a teaching artist sharing her creative process with community in school settings, senior centers, museums, and healing spaces throughout New York with organizations creating site specific public arts mural, mixed media installations, and anthologies for publication.
“The benefit to bringing arts practice into collaboration with the community cannot be overstated, it is priceless watching individuals blossom in the wonder of their own creativity and come together to celebrate their unity and diversity by using their creative voice”.
“Are you Ruby’s Granddaughter? III” By Pamella Allen
17 × 9 x .5 inches
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Ply Wood (2025)
USD $750
Artist Statement:
I was born a creative, landed feet first at Crossroads in Jamaica to a military father and a mother who would soon leave me to my destiny. Hard wired to make things, my process is intuitive and instructive. Through my visual and word based works I investigate the intersections of memory, place, and the mystic of nature. Unmoored, I travel the world by land and sea while finding a tribe of souls in Brooklyn. I Develop a layered and multi genre creative process using artifacts from these experiences to create a unique archetype that builds the mixed media paintings, earthwork installations & prose that represents a body of works created over 40 years of arts practice. These works are a story telling, a means for actualization and a tool for communication, an attempt at grounding. The story of this immigrant child is one of lost, memory and a foundational disconnect from the mother and a life unmoored. With my arts practice I seek to find connection, to fill in the blank spaces and now it has brought me back to Jamaica to embody and honor what has been lost and the beautiful resilience of what remains to continue this creative journey newly grounded.
©️Pamella Allen 2025
