Alex Ashton / About
Throughout Alex`s extensive artistic career she has regularly exhibited worldwide. She has designed, developed and taught a wide range of workshops, seminars and demonstrations at schools, colleges and within community based education.
Direction of Work
My work is based on emotional responses to situations and events. The imagery creates a narrative through more formal, considered elements, such as composition, colour and symbolism.
I aim for my paintings, prints and 3-D pieces to function on several different levels, trying to synthesise these elements into a whole.
I have been exploring the use of colour to interpret moods, events and situations. This has been an attempt to change the atmosphere within the work; I also have begun to incorporate the figure into the area s of the images, which often appear in a dream like landscape.
Each piece is an examination of the more formal elements painting, printmaking and sculpture. The application of paint, colour, shape and texture, to produce form and content through objects, motifs and pattern; the recognition of structure and composition is an important tool with which to guide the viewers attention. Different elements are combined using traditional and experimental techniques; stitching into paper, combining print with drawing, painting and print, print and ceramics.
My work is an assimilation of visual images, emotional responses and symbolic content. The paintings, print and sculptures are attempting to rationalise complex and often conflicting emotive events and place them within a more subjective framework. They have evolved into a personal attempt to make sense of the world I inhabit and my place within it.
All my work revolves around exploration and experimentation, combining traditional elements of print with paper, fabric, glass and ceramic technology. My work involves using techniques from painting, screen-printing, printing from surfaces as well as printing onto glass and clay to produce different effects, so that whilst the pieces all have very different outcomes they are essentially dealing with the same ideas and issues.
My work is influenced by living in North Africa and the Middle East as well as travelling to Japan and the Far East. I am fascinated by different cultures, faiths and histories: Long traditions of art, craft and design and the influences of culture on contemporary Art and Design.