For the Love of Alison: "precious" artist and gallerist remembered
A new exhibition in Edinburgh celebrates the life and work of Alison Auldjo, a gallery director and artist who died last year from cancer aged just 47. The show’s organisers, including artist Joyce Gunn Cairns and her husband John Downie share their memories with Susan Mansfield.
In September 2025, Alison Auldjo, the director of Edinburgh’s Union Gallery, lost her battle with cancer at the age of just 47. Now her husband, friends and some of the artists she supported in their careers are celebrating her memory in what feels like the most appropriate way – by staging an exhibition.
For the Love of Alison, which runs at WASPS Gallery in Patriothall, Edinburgh, until 14 November, is centred on a display of Alison’s own paintings – which she rarely exhibited herself – alongside work by Ann Oram, Jenny Matthews, Joyce Gunn Cairns, Sophie McKay Knight, Olivia Irvine and others. Thirty per cent of the proceeds from all sales will be donated to Cancer Research UK.
One of those helping to stage the show is Karyn Watt, a former lawyer, chair of the Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham Trust and an old friend of Alison’s. She says: “We wanted to raise money for cancer research because of what Ali went through, to give her work pride of place and also to link in with her favourite artists that she supported. She was just one of life’s very precious people.”
The week before the show opened, I sat with the five organisers in a cosy cafe near the gallery as they talked about how to hang an exhibition of more than 50 paintings without the woman who would have done the job impeccably. “She was, without a doubt, the best curator,” says Alison’s husband John Downie. “She got compliments from very senior curators about how her gallery looked. She would do it perfectly.”
Alison was born in Falkirk and brought up in High Bonnybridge, where her father was an artist and art teacher, before studying at Edinburgh College of Art. She was 31 when she opened the Union Gallery on Broughton Street in 2009, a bold move during a recession. However, the gallery quickly earned respect – and supporters.
Alison’s superb eye and passion for the art she represented helped build a loyal following, and she helped launch the careers of artists such as Audrey Grant, Samantha Boyes and Henry Jabbour. She welcomed emerging artists, always taking time to understand their work, and granted many their first solo shows. In 2016, the Union Gallery relocated to bigger premises on Drumsheugh Place.
“She was everything you could want in a gallerist,” says artist Joyce Gunn Cairns, one of the organising group. “She was loyal, she was incredibly affirming of everything I did as an artist, she was passionate about the work. She was always welcoming when you went into the gallery to have a chat and a laugh and put the world to rights. Her death is a terrible loss.”
Also at the table is artist Sophie McKay Knight, who says Alison supported her at key times in her career. “My work isn’t for everybody, and a while ago I was painting the tarot, full-size paintings of the 78 tarot cards. I never expected a gallery to support that kind of work, but Alison was fascinated, generous, curious. I was really blown away by how open-minded she was, particularly as she’d a Christian faith.
“She gave me a solo exhibition in 2020. It was a difficult time, but eventually we had an opening with everyone socially distanced. I got some masks made with images from the paintings to cheer everyone up. That she would offer me a solo show at such a difficult time – I’ve never forgotten that.”
In an interview with the website StockbridgeEdinburgh when the Union Gallery celebrated its fifth birthday in 2014, Alison explained something of her philosophy as a gallery director. “Bringing the best of the contemporary art scene to public view is my career and vocation and I genuinely believe it to be very important to both artist and audience.
“It must be something to do with the artist in me as I don’t look at the art with pound signs in my eyes and prefer to think of the bigger picture. I have a great deal of empathy for those who show here. I know what genuine work takes out of an artist. It’s like putting your heart and soul on the walls for public scrutiny. It’s excruciating and so I try to be beside them at every step of the way.”
Alison made time for her own art despite the pressures of running a gallery, but she was modest and self-effacing about her own paintings. The rare times when she did put her own work on the gallery walls proved her to be a superbly sensitive painter, of landscapes and particularly animals, from hares and donkeys to giraffes and kangaroos. Her big, gentle boxer dog, Dennis, was her constant companion.
Joyce Gunn Cairns says: “For a good part of the time in which Alison supported my work, I had no idea she was herself a consummate artist. When I saw her work I was truly gobsmacked. Her feeling for creatures was visceral.”
Karyn Watt adds: “I think her art reflects her personality, very gentle, very thoughtful, but thought-provoking in a lot of cases as well. Some of them have a more challenging side to them with messages around climate change, the impact of humans on the natural world.”
As the coffee is drunk, the stories start to emerge. Karyn admits to being the person who introduced Alison and John in 2014. John takes up the tale: “A friend was organising a group to go out for a curry, and Karyn invited Alison. At 5pm on 28 June, 2014, I walked into The Wally Dug pub and Ali was sitting next to Karyn. I said, ‘Oh hello, who are you?” and that was the start.
“We got on like a house on fire. Ali actually proposed to me on 29 February, 2016. I said yes, and after a few delays we got married on 2 June 2023.”
Alison first discovered a breast lump in 2019, but was reassured it was just dense tissue. Further concerns in 2022 led to the discovery of two tumours, one HER2-positive and one the more aggressive triple-negative type. However, after surgery and a demanding treatment regime, she was declared cancer-free.
In autumn 2022, Alison made the decision to close the Union Gallery, and opened the smaller Lady Mâché Gallery in North Berwick in 2024. Karyn says: “She wanted a simpler, happier life, to have smaller premises and cut down on the number of artists she was engaging with so she could have more time for her own creativity. It was much easier, and it worked really well.”
However, in 2025 Alison began to feel unwell and a CT scan confirmed her fears – that the cancer had returned and had spread to her bones, lungs and liver. Alison and John hoped that pioneering chemotherapy could hold the illness in check, but it progressed quickly, and she died on 16 September.
Her friends talk about her positive attitude, and how she always put others first, even when she was very ill. While their sense of loss is palpable, they want to celebrate a woman who excelled as artist, curator and gallerist, and who was always full of life. Sophie sums it up: “She’s such a loss, personally, to all of us, but also professionally to Edinburgh and Scotland, to the whole art scene.”
For the Love of Alison: An exhibition to honour the life and work of artist and Union Gallery director Alison Auldjo is at WASPS Patriothall Gallery, Stockbridge, until 14 November, open 11am-4pm daily except Mondays.