49 West Coffeehouse, Winebar & Gallery, is a place that brings art, music, and community together with great food and drink in an ambiance inspired by the traditional European coffeehouse.

View and Purchase Artwork

Alison Chase Radcliffe and Rita Corwin at 49 West

Now exhibiting at 49 West through July 2025

Alison Chase Radcliffe Bio

“Art and music are my tools to investigate and present a
coherent expression of the universal experience of joy and
sorrow. I approach the past and the present as one state of
being, and seek answers with artifacts from my imagination
as well as engaging social dialogue through portraiture.”
– ACR

Visual Art and Music are under the same vision umbrella for ACR.

As a young child Alison was steeped in traditional music and surrounded by working artists. Alison could be found hard at work at her craft before the age of three, performing with her mother’s string bands, and assisting her father with his photography. This was the beginning of her lifelong devotion to Art and Music.

For Alison, the ultimate human experience is making art. She unifies these art forms to explore the human condition. Alison’s drawings and paintings can be described as psychological portraiture, reflecting and revealing unseen qualities of her subject. The subject is often a person Alison is interacting with in her everyday life (she draws whoever is in the room with her) Sometimes, Alison holds mad tea- parties in other dimensions, creating expansive time areas. Many pieces originate from imagination or are first rendered from observation and then finished by means of imagination and memory.

As a musician, Alison works in blues, spirituals, jazz, and soul. She arranges and performs traditional music, as well
as composes originals for vocals, and keys. Alison’s deep and resonant vocals and powerful vibrato are juxtaposed with her understated rhythmic piano and keyboard accompaniment. She seeks to take the audience on an exploration of sound, guiding listeners to a smoldering core interior intersection. Alison shows and teaches art and music locally and internationally, and performs both as a solo act and collaboratively. Some of these collaborations are: The Blood & Sunflower, Alison Chase Radcliffe (ACR) and Daryl McElveen; The Sorrow Singers, ACR and Allen Holmes; The Alison Radcliffe Band, ACR and Friends; Alison Chase Radcliffe and David Jackson Duo.

Her recordings include Doris in Mind, Songs of Peace and Forgiveness, I Want Jesus to Walk with Me, Soul of a People Smithsonian Documentary Soundtrack, and her 2019 EP “Hard Feelings”. She is currently working on a new album.

You can purchase a copy of Alison’s EP ‘Hard Feelings’ on her website as well as view selected Artworks. Inquiries are welcome:

Learn more about Alison here.

Artist Statement

Art and Music are my reasons for being. They are my way to engage with and try to understand the world
around me and myself as well as create a world and a self that are intellectually/aesthetically/socially/
emotionally thrilling and humorous, and that explore, experiment, evolve, and deepen. In Visual Art I work
with different media and Art forms including charcoal, acrylic, oil, pencil, watercolor, photography,
plywood, paper, cardboard, and others.

In Music, I sing and play piano/keyboards, and do originals as well as traditional and old
blues/spirituals/jazz/Appalachian.

I make Art no matter what else is going on or what else I am doing. It is an extension of myself, and my
way to be in the world and with others. It is a way to communicate. It is a way to explore the in-between
worlds.

I used to be an oil snob, but had the sudden urge to blast my eyeballs and brain with fluorescent and
other blazing colors, which I started by polyurethaning some of my oil pieces and painting over them with
acrylics. Acrylic has now sort of taken over as my primary medium, along with charcoal. Charcoal is such
an extension of my eye/brain, that it feels a part of me. Charcoal can be sculpted and molded; it is like dry
paint, or two-dimensional clay, as well as also being the best pencil.

The Face Is The Place: Portraiture is my favorite Art tool, a subject-vehicle to use as a way of
creating/exploring/the human condition/relationships. I try to see inside of people, including myself, not
intrusively, but as opposed to cosmetically. I also do a lot of self-portraits. I am studying what is going on
with someone, not moods or isolated expressions, but people being unexplainably themselves. So much
happens in a face, and I take many visual notes over the time it takes to draw/paint someone, which can
continue later from memory/imagination. The marks are everything I am seeing, thinking, imagining and
sensing, not just rendering of a person’s features. I am endlessly fascinated/inspired by/ amazed by how
different the same face can look from moment to moment, and yet always look like the same person.

Rita Corwin Bio

I studied studio art and art history throughout my life. Locally, I have studied at the Art League in Alexandria, Rockville Arts Place, and the Yellow Barn Studio at Glen Echo, Maryland. My paintings have been exhibited in numerous group and juried shows in the Washington area, Frederick, MD, Virginia, and New York City. My work is in private collections in the United States and in Europe.

Learn more about Rita here.

Artist Statement

Rita’s paintings are in the Abstract Expressionist style, with emphasis on color and mood. The works are non-representational; and each piece evolves as color and shape and assumes its own character. The viewer is then free to experience the paintings intuitively without a prescribed subject or focus. Rita is able to make forms and colors evocative, experiential, and capable of eliciting emotion and mood.

Their work is on display at 49 West located at 49 West St, Annapolis, MD 21401. Open daily.