Alyson Petruncio (b. 1993, Virginia, USA) studied biology and bioinformatics at Virginia Tech, George Mason University, and Johns Hopkins University before working in biomedical research and cellular biology, with a focus on annotating biological image data.

She began her creative career in 2018 through commissioned portraits and later moved away from commissions to develop a surrealist style shaped by her experiences with mental health and the complexities of emotional expression. Working primarily in colored pencil, often paired with pen and acrylic marker, she embraces the medium’s bright, playful qualities to create deliberate contrast with the unsettling and often eerie subject matter.

Her work reimagines the visual language of Americana - suburban streets, cultural symbols, and the aesthetics of the American dream - through distorted and dreamlike forms. Warped facial features, ambiguous expressions, and liminal spaces create a tension between the familiar and the uncanny, reflecting her exploration of the gaps between surface appearances and deeper emotional realities.