Nicholas Ashton

 

Originally from Portsmouth, Nicholas Ashton moved to the North of England during 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 using 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.  He currently lives in London and his recent paintings are a response to the beauty of the natural environment, its colour, light and how it coexists within the post-industrial landscape.