Making Art in an Age of Noise — SSA Magazine
Essay · February 2026

Making Art in an Age of Noise — SSA Magazine

An essay published in the SSA magazine in February 2026, written in response to a growing conversation among artists about the role of slow, hand-made image-making in an era of AI-generated imagery and infinite digital scroll.

An extract

"Every painting I make takes weeks. There is no shortcut in oil on linen — the layers have to dry, the forms have to be earned. I used to apologise for that slowness, as though speed were a virtue I had failed to learn. I don't apologise for it now. The slowness is the work. It is the thing that makes the painting hold something that a generated image cannot: the trace of a body, the record of a decision, the evidence that a human being stood here and looked and cared."

The full essay covers Alona's practice of research-led image-making, her relationship to Slavic folklore as a living mythology rather than a historical archive, and what it means to paint the feminine when the female image is simultaneously more reproduced and more contested than at any other point in history.

The essay is available on the SSA website and in the print edition of the SSA magazine, distributed to members and partner galleries across Scotland.

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