Artists & Illustrators — June 2017

Artists & Illustrators 19

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N

ow in her eighties, the Turner Prize-nominated

Royal Academician who was made a CBE in

2011 – among other accolades – is, according

to BBC broadcaster and art enthusiast Andrew

Marr, “probably the finest abstract painter alive in Britain.”

Yet Gillian Ayres’ name isn’t part of the public

consciousness in the same way as many of her

contemporaries. But that may be about to change. A fresh

critical eye is being cast over her 60-year career with a

major retrospective at the National Museum Cardiff, an

exhibition of paintings and woodcuts at Alan Cristea Gallery

in London and a new monograph by art critic Martin

Gayford. Gillian Ayres’ place in the history of British

abstract art looks increasingly undisputed.

A serious colourist whose bold forms and joyful

compositions burst with movement and energy, Gillian’s

long career has revolved around her obsession with using

paint to capture an emotional response. She has

experimented with media, scale and abstraction, while

following her own exploratory path. “Her motifs are there to

carry colour-energies, not to represent anything, even when

they may look like fronds, leaves or stars,” says Andrew.

“They aren’t symbols. One of her strengths is that, for

Gillian, a painting is a painting is a painting.” And the artist

has long eschewed offering a commentary on her work,

letting her greens, blues, pinks and oranges do the talking.

And this singular approach may have contributed to her low

profile, says Andrew. “She does most of her work far from

London, on the border between Devon and Cornwall, and

seems entirely uninterested in playing any of the art games

used to promote contemporary painters,” he says. “She

just gets on with it, and lets the works speak for

themselves. As, increasingly loudly, they do.”

Born in Barnes in 1930 and educated at St Paul’s Girls’

School, Gillian showed early determination to take the road

less travelled, insisting on studying art – something largely

unheard of for polite young women of the time – at

Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. Yet, finding her

artistic instincts

in conflict with the

Euston Road

School style of

painters who

taught there, she dropped out before sitting her diploma,

taking off for Cornwall to focus on her daring interplay of

colour and explore new ways of working. And upping sticks

and heading to some of the most remote parts of the UK

• Wales, Cornwall and Devon – is a pattern that has
  repeated itself throughout her creative life.
  During the 1950s, she applied oils and household paint
  with rags and brushes, creating works inspired by Tachisme
  painting and Abstract Expressionism, such as Tachiste
  Painting No.1. By the 1960s, she had made a name for
  herself on the art scene and was experimenting with
  light-filled, optimistic works in oils and acrylics that
  captured the hedonism of the decade.
  When painting found itself out of fashion in the 1970s,
  Gillian – always out of kilter – was instead creating them on
  a larger and larger scale; whether it was discovering Van

GILLIAN

AYRES

BROADCASTER AND ART LOVER ANDREW MARR THINKS SHE IS ‘BRITAIN’S FINEST

ABSTRACT PAINTER’. NOW WITH A NEW RETROSPECTIVE AND BOOK FOCUSING

ON HER WORK, SALLY HALES ASKS HIM WHY WE SHOULD ALL BE TAKING NOTICE

“I FIRST SAW

HER WORK IN THE

1980S,” SAYS

ANDREW. “I CAN

REMEMBER AN

ALMOST VISCERAL

THRILL AT THE

COMPLEXITY OF

THINKING AND

DENSE WORKING”

LEFT Tachiste

Painting No.1,

1957, oil and

ripolin on board,

122x122cm

18 Gillian Ayres.indd 19 10/04/2017 12: