Blog
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- Ashley Hanson
We recently welcomed a group of artists to our Spring 'Freedom in Painting' course in Port Isaac, Cornwall. As always, we begin the course drawing in the landscape, looking for ideas for paintings.This year we took our artists to two new and very different locations, bustling Padstow and the beautiful clifftop panoramas of Pentire.
We began by taking the short ferry ride from Rock to Padstow, where we spent the morning making a series of quick sketches around the harbour, also visiting the inspiring Padstow Gallery. We then headed for a delicious lunch at the Harbour Hotel with its fabulous views of the Camel River, before heading off to Pentire for the afternoon drawing session. The weather was glorious, the sketchbooks were bulging, full of ideas for painting...
Group exercise: Colour & collage, structure & movement
On Thursday morning, after setting up the studio, we went straight into a group markmaking exercise, responding to the idea of structure and movement in the landscape, using the distinctive blue and yellow palette of Padstow and the Camel River. Some of the studies became a direct entry into painting.
Erica Shipley
A question was posed about the difference between a study and a painting and with one of our artists, Erica Shipley, the study became the artwork, with multiple changes and refinements over two days, resulting in this delightful and inventive piece.
On Friday morning - another glorious day - I took the group drawing around Port Isaac, with the glistening water, piers and steep hillsides inspiring many of the paintings. After lunch, back at the studio, I gave an introductory talk about finding a personal language for 'image' and the relationship between abstraction and figuration in painting, including examples of work by Jeremy Gardiner, Roger Hilton and Rose Hilton and David Pearce. This was followed by a demonstration, starting my own Padstow painting and sharing my ideas about translating drawing into painting, unsurprisingly starting with blue and yellow stripes!
From this point on, the artists developed their paintings in the studio, with lots of individual tuition and further demonstrations, ending as always with an insightful group critique. The course offers space and encouragement for play and experimentation, leaving the comfort zone and exploring the possibilities of painting. As you can see from the gallery below, over the five days exciting paintings emerged, each artist with a distinctive approach, working from a shared subject. Hats off to the artists!
The story of Sarah Croome's painting...
ARTISTS QUOTES:
'Space to try out new techniques and ideas in a creative atmospere' MARION OWEN
'Definitely moved me forward with technique and organisation of colour balance' SARAH CROOME
'i got very involved and did work which surprised me - I think when you are surprised by what you've done, its a tribute to the course' ERICA SHIPLEY
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- Ashley Hanson
TUES 27 MAY 2025
A final session, a final look with time and space and silence. Looking for questions and finding the answers, Taking risks with the painting...
Refinements of colour and line and simplification of the composition: the 'eyes' more prominent, the curves of the harbour stronger, the blues even denser and less fragmented. The big move was taking out the dark-line on the left and simplifying the bottom edge to focus instead on the tuned-up yellows on the left edge and the cut, near-horizontal, which now talks with the angled line of the pier above and the blue slant above 'the eyes'. It is strong!
detail: 'the eyes'
Blue on blue, (below) with jewel-like incident of startling yellows, orange and a new translucent rose. A final flourish of vertical brushmarks, redrawing the harbour and the dark blue line on the left subverting both the space and the square. The final version has more drama and contrast, energy and difference. Love the colour proportion now and the procession of surprising marks, both conscious and revealed, across the top third. I have been aware of the eyes of the piers throughout the 'Porthleven' series - glowing more than ever in this painting.
In an earlier stage below (left), a yellow harbour shape is reminiscent of Soutine's 'Carcass of Beef' or the curved hip of a Modigliani nude. The broken red line is strong but the painting felt too graphic and known. New blues followed (right): I enjoyed the cascade of rectangles across the centre and the new horizontals but it's too flat with the harbour losing its' strength and definition.
The painting is a reflection of the blue and yellow palette of Porthleven this week, where the sun shone every day...
Appropriately, 'Kind of Blue' by Miles Davis is the perfect album for looking at this painting
PS After finishing the painting, I went back to 'Porthleven 53 (The Clock & the Moon)', now much closer to the idea and the experience. Looking good together!
- Details
- Ashley Hanson
Selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 17 June - 17 August 2025
TUES 21 JAN
I have decided to dedicate this painting to Stass Paraskos, who introduced me to the art of Matisse & Bonnard and the world of colour at Canterbury College of Art. Thank-you, Stass.
I've been in touch recently with great friends from art college - Paula Crabtree, Chris Salmon, Jon Isherwood - and have been reflecting on those days, my career, where it all came from and Stass undoubtably played a major part, alongside Tom Watt, of course. It was not only Stass's art and teaching that had such an influence on my painting but also the artists he invited to teach us: Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Mali Morris, Geoff Rigden, Eileen Cooper, Anthony Caro, John Gibbons, Dennis Creffield, Vanessa Jackson etc. With such a stellar and diverse cast, it's no surprise my interest in painting remains on the borderline of abstraction and figuration. It's been a 40 year journey now, more. I may be under the radar as an artist, but I'm proud of what I've made. A photorealist when I entered college to this: a sensuous, free, bold, lyrical, intelligent, surprising painting, very much part of the lineage of colour, past and present coming together. One of my very best and my entry for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
'Dialogues' could seamlessly be an alternative title: 'Dialogues' between colour, between abstraction and figuration, between line and shape, between left-side and right-side. Between the man-made and and the organic landscape, between geometry and gesture, between space and energy, between freedom and control...
'COLOURSCAPES' - Geometry & Gesture' with Jane Crane at the Crypt Gallery St. Ives 8-14 March 2025
MON 20 JAN
Is the painting now too busy? There is definately more incident and movement (Sunday), different journeys around the painting whereas Saturday is more languid, floaty, yet more rigid. The two versions are like the difference between the stiffness and straightness of Matisse and the contrasting curves of Madame Matisse in 'The Conversation', and having to choose between them! In Saturday, the focus seems to be the grouping of large rectangles in the centre, whereas, in Sunday, I enter the painting from the angled meeting of yellow and blue on the bottom edge, moving upwards. I think I'll put my brushes away.
Looking forward to showing these two beauties together in 'COLOURSCAPES, Geometry & Gesture', an exhibition with Jane Crane at the Crypt Gallery, St. Ives 8 -14 March. The paintings may be connected!
'Porthleven 77 (Kasbah)' 45x35cm & 'Porthleven 78 (For Stass...)' 142x116 cm 2025
SUN 19 JAN
I have a giddy feeling it might be done, after today's changes. The concept of 'balance' is the constant in this piece, from the original idea of the harbour balancing on the tip of the clocktower to colour balance and the balance between the left and right sides. How about a balance between abstraction and figuration? Today the yellow mark hangng from the line in the bottom right corner, became my maybe clocktower, a simple yet distinctive shape of striking yellow. The angled roof inspired a repetition on the left side with another roof implied with an open blue triangle. Pared-down imagery, subservient to the painting, but bringing in specifics of place and difference.
The whole painting is an 'image', the twin curves implying an entrace, portal, doorway with a space beyond, an impossible, magical painting space. Today, a new orange came in, flaring into the blue from the central axis, refining the shape of the harbour and bringing in a new curve which may be the pier in front of the Ship Inn. Now a balance between geometry and curves...
This is the essence of my work, the excitement of finding the tipping point where a piece of paint, a colour, a mark could be something in the world, but not so graphic that the image grabs the attention at the expense of the painting and its acute balances and tensions and resonances and emotions. A triangle implies a building or is simply a triangle or is a representation of the man-made landscape. Similarly, a curve or gestural mark can represent movement and the natural world and its forces...
There are steps everwhere in Porthleven, represented here by stepped shapes and line, painted consciously and subconsciously. My last question is whether the wiggley dark blue line at the bottom is too graphic a representation of water? (8). At the same time it does a great job for the painting, bringing in more curves and movement and creating a beautiful shape within a shape and an upward movement from the bottom edge. What is best for the painting?
(8)
7
SAT 18 JAN 3 p.m
Breakthrough. Dragging paint through paint below the yellow bar, creates an upward movement, a simplification and difference. More line, more drawing, a procession of curves (7). I took away the blue 'step' intrusion into the yellow at the bottom (7). A balance of yellow and blue, but also a balance of strength of shape and colour and delicacy of line and feathery brushwork. I have a vision of the lowest yellow mark, hanging from the line, becoming my clocktower, the yellow onto blue balancing the blue marks onto yellow diagonally opposite. Tomorrow.
6
SAT 18 JAN a.m.
Stacking shapes and colour to reach the top. Looking for my harbour: the long fisherman's pier has appeared as a maybe, the horizontal golden bar above the purple. Where is the new thing? The best thing is the colour.
Bringing in line/drawing for the first time. I keep seeing a paralell with my depictions of the verticality of Manhattan in my 'City of Glass' series. Here, at present, the harbour shape doesn't convince, I'm treading water. I have a problem with the squared-off blue entering the yellow at the bottom of the painting. This might work if I flooded the right side with yellow to the line. This 'step' is less of a problem, if I turn the canvas - it implies distance.
5
FRI 17 JAN
Still coming to terms with the large scale of the canvas - getting the paint down - but a good session. I can see many ways forward. I'm still looking at the proportions of yellow/warm to blue/cool. Love the purity of the new large vertical blue mark on the right-edge (5). The painting looks good all the other ways too - exciting!
4
3
FRI 10 JAN p.m.
Truer colour in daylight. Crude blues and yellows at the moment, apart from the bottom blue but the painting is lively and the canvas is covered! Let's not get fixated on the clocktower - yet. The harbour-shape is more inportant; shape, scale, colour. I have a vision of a shift from weighty midnight blue on the right to an etherial pale blue on the left. That will determine where the pivot of the clocktower will be.
It's an idea: tilted harbour balanced on the tip of the clocktower, a balance of yellow and blue...(2) Early days.
PS The soundtrack for this painting was Nina Simone and Radiohead's sublime 'In Rainbows', a present from my son, Ollie
- Details
- Ashley Hanson
SAT 4 JAN 2025
An exotic palette for my first painting of 2025, 'Porthleven 77 (Kasbah)'. The title came after: a memory of Matisse's 'Entrance to the Kasbah', sparked by the curves at the back of the harbour. Enjoying the seductive colour, the delicious ambiguities between piers, shapes and spaces, and the unexpected echo of the top red curves in the bottom right corner.
'The frisson between information and imagination, shape and space, line and mass, strength and fragility, deliberation and chance...'
'Entrance to the Kasbah' 1912 Henri Matisse
The painting began with play: repetitions of small blocks of colour with variations of tool, direction and scale (left). Paint on paint, paint adjacent, paint through paint, paint removed. Originally in a landscape format, the central dark marks formed a tentative harbour-shape. Changing orientation, in a painting full of possibilities, I flooded the canvas with a lemon-based yellow, isolating the marks that excited me most - the grouping of small blocks now along the bottom edge (right).
I saw this grouping as the harbour entrance and this simple line drawing on scrap paper became the template for the painting, bringing in structure, context, meaning and difference, with the twin curves springing from the central axis a new element alongside the familiar.
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- Ashley Hanson
FRI 10 JAN 2025
Further extravagencies; new blues and a tear of hot pink in the centre of the top-left pier, which I thought was a bit of a dead-zone that broke the horizontal. It was a choice between light and colour...I went with colour. Lush: loving the intrusion of blue inside the red, softening the red-shape and echoing the transparent green pier below. Denise is now in love with the painting enjoying the new shape 'and the colours are singing'.
18 DEC 2024
'Red Harbour' has come a long way since its beginning in November 2015! Love the writhing reds - more Soutine than Matisse now - the density of colour, the punctuations of blue and green, the curious open-shape formed by the angled line on the right springing back from the bottom edge, leading the eye back into the heart of the painting. Big thanks to Denise for sparking this rework, she never liked the big shape in (4), finding it awkard and cumbersome.
Back in 2015, the start-point was a drawing I made from the fisherman's pier in Porthleven, picking up the rhythms of angles and triangles of cranes and boats, the slipways and the buildings behind. You can still see elements of the drawing in the top third of finished painting, the quayside, angled slipway and triangular crane.
The early stages closely followed the drawing (1) with a sap-green glaze over the slipway adding interest, its liquidity and transparency subverting reality (2).
(1)
(2)
The painting really began when I put the drawing away and turned the canvas: immediately the imagery was less obvious, the space more interesting, almost sculptural in (3), forms, structures are hinted at rather than illustrated, the marks and shapes and colours with their own interest. Now we are looking at the whole harbour, with its three distinctive kinds of water, separated/broken down by the two central pairs of piers. The slipway becomes a pier and the outlines of buildings a geometric language for moving water.
In (4), the painting became a homage to Matisse's 'The Red Studio', the painting, more than any, that has influenced my work. In the bottom-left corner is a tiny linear 'red studio', the Old Lifeboat House where we run our courses. However, I was never happy with the shape of the red mass and the relationship between the four central piers. If you look at Matisse's painting, in the glorious expanse of Venetian Red, each of the individual elements has a strength and character, each contributing to the whole. In my painting, only the transparent green pier had a presence.
'The Red Studio' 1911
Below are two stages of the reworking last week. Firstly bringing in more reds and changing the piers and surrounding blue but the shape became too rounded (5). The breakthrough came with a new dense blue/teal on the left, framing the harbour and bringing in a powerful patch of cobalt-blue to provoke the reds. The last moves were replacing the white streak with a wristy blue curve, and a flash of bright green in the top pier.. The finished painting is much more lively in both colour and movement, less reverential to Matisse and stronger for it, but, I hope, with the same 'presence' of red.
P.S. Soundtrack: 'Brilliant Trees' by David Sylvian., 1984. '..drowning in my nostalgia....'
Bjork, 'Debut' and 'Post', Neil Young 'Southern Man'