Intangible Landscapes

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Originally from Portsmouth, Nicholas Ashton moved to the North in the early eighties to study Fine Art at Sunderland Art College. His work at this time comprised sculpture and paintings inspired by the works of Baselitz, Auerbach, Bacon and Beckmann. The work was figurative, narrative and expressionist in style.

In 1984 he studied sculpture at St. Martin’s School of Art.  Here his preoccupation with working from the body as a ‘way in’ to the understanding of corporeality and the translation of physicality into sculpture resulted in some dynamic work literally hacked into existence by means of primitive tools and techniques including splitting the material with steel wedges and hammers, and cutting and shaping the forms by means of an axe or an adze.

He went on to develop a painting style characterised by an expressionist and emotional use of paint as a plastic material and later moved towards pure abstraction and a concern with the spiritual nature of colour. His recent works are figurative depictions of and emotional responses to the landscape.  But they go further.  By combining factual and imaginative elements, the current works offer a subjective and personal interpretation of a visited or remembered place, often going beyond scientific or purely visual documentation.

Nicholas currently lives and works in London.