Allen Bishop was born in 1953 in Moab, Utah.  He is an abstract expressionist whose work shows the interaction of geometry, shape, and color.  His painting takes the raw elements of line, color, and form and empowers them with order.  He lives and teaches in Granite, Utah.
Bishop first encountered abstract expressionism when he was Don Olson’s student at Jordan High School.  Bishop earned a BFA from the University of Utah in 1978 and an MFA from the University of Denver School of Art in 1982.  The Utah Arts Council awarded him a Visual Arts Fellowship (1987–89). He taught at Sam Houston State University in Texas, at the University of Denver, at the Visual Art Institute in Salt Lake, and at the Salt Lake Art Center.

Bishop’s paintings are primarily nonrepresentational and inspired by geometric shapes. Because he allows the painting to define the shape of the canvas rather than allowing the canvas to define the shape of the painting, he does not paint in a traditional, rectangular canvas.  Instead, his paintings expand in all different directions.  In 1986, he began to work with his distinctive permutable paintings—a series of canvases that the viewer can arrange according to his wishes.  Straxis is an example of his permutable painting.

Bishop’s work is held in collections at the LDS Museum of Art, the E. F. Hutton Company in Denver, the Springville Museum of Art, and the BYU Museum of Art, and in numerous private collections.

Biographical information on this page was adapted from the Springville Museum of Art.