Ashley West :: Gallery

paintings in this group have a number of common elements. They were amongst the first paintings produced in my new studio, which made working on a larger scale more feasible. Perhaps another result of the extra elbow room was the increasing tendency to paint bands directly with a loaded decorators brush rather than drawing with charcoal first. These pieces also all include strong configurations that arise out of the ground-work and move upwards through horizontal levels to the upper reaches of the painting. Again there is a strong connection with the music of Tavener, but also Messiaen and the Blues, where a searching for significant motifs is prevalent, as if these motifs have the capacity to connect with something higher or draw something down. I had also been looking at the geometric motifs found in Shoowa designs from Zaire, and had visited Morocco for the first time. What interested me about Berber rugs was the horizontal banding, the highly intuitive and non-formulaic motifs, and the occasional use of ‘featureless’ monochromatic fields of colour.

I recall Painting with Crimson Loops being completed quite confidently and quickly. This is reflected in the directly painted crimson lines, which at the time reminded me of the looping movement of railway lines. Disused railway lines were an important feature of walks into the Northamptonshire countryside when I was young. Like crosses I have always been fascinated by the idea of the ‘flag’ as a marker, or a suggestion of a place of significance. In this painting a flag is suggested by the three banded rectangle on top of the ogee curve (another connection with Morocco, and of course Matisse).

Painting with Centre Heart Form resulted from a major re-working of a previous piece. A beautiful, rather exotic bird-form appeared in this piece, which I was tempted to keep. This was possibly the impact of a marauding flock of noisy emerald green Parakeets that circled the area around the studio during that summer. The painting threatened to become an image of a kind of garden - a paradise. Ultimately it had to go, but a small vestige of it appears central within the blue band at the top of the painting, and together with the suggestion of oranges, the heart form, and the warm glow over much of the painting, perhaps something of this feeling remains. Another significant element in this piece is the way that configurations reach outside of the confines of the canvas for completion. The wing-form in the bottom half of the painting reminds me of ambiguous lines on aerodrome runways. In my youth I used to cycle to work over the disused airfield at Grafton Underwood where the Flying Fortresses used to take off during the Second World War. In Painting with Pink Triangle the blue-grey band is quite insistent, defying the larger scale of the piece, pushing against the edges and traversing its whole length and breadth before being held back by the upper limit. Small rectangular and triangular elements appear to act as wedges, assisting in holding the piece together, in the same way that pegs, ties and other such accessories can be of crucial importance in the fine tuning of any construction or mechanism. Painting with Balloon Form required a great deal of repeated re-working. Sometimes this consisted of agitating it here and there; at others this gave way to rapid painting out of large areas. Around this time I started to take an interest in Persian miniatures, particularly those showing division of the picture space into a complex of architectural spaces, connected through windows and doorways. They contain an illusion of depth through which movement can take place, while at the same time appearing quite flat. Again there is a connection with a game board - like snakes and ladders - or a labyrinth, or house of many rooms.