Modern Artists Gallery Berkshire UK
Ashley Hanson Paintings

City of Glass Series  2013

Ashley Hanson describes himself as ‘the product of an interesting conflict between abstraction and figuration during the 1980s’.

 

Ashley Hanson returns to Modern Artists Gallery Berkshire UK  to show a new important collection of paintings from his most recent series  The City of Glass.  Paintings  inspired by author Paul Auster's book 'City of Glass'

"It is thrilling to be working from another art form, combining images sourced from narrative and text with memories of my own experience of New York.  As a painter I can relate to Auster's striking imagery and complex layerings of identity and truth and his acknowledgment and explorations of chance."

Ashley Hanson  was selected for last year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and is a recent prizewinner of the Hunting Art Prizes.

After graduating with a BA (Hons) Fine Art First Class from Canterbury College of Art.  In 1997 Ashley won a Slade School of Art Boise Travel Scholarship to North America, where he made a series of train journeys around the states before painting for two months in a barn in upstate New York, at the home of the sculptor Jon Isherwood.

Hanson has continued making work about his experiences in the US, with the series ‘Americascapes’ and ‘The Englands’, which enabled him to interlink paintings inspired by the coastal landscapes of Cornwall and New England

Various events in Hanson’s career have inspired, influenced and invigorated his interest in colour: his early admiration for the work of Peter Lanyon, especially Porthleven 1951; a lecture from Terry Frost whilst at Canterbury College of Art; the influence of Thomas Watt, the Principal at Canterbury; and his visit to the 1992 Matisse exhibition in New York and later his time spent at the Triangle Artists Workshop hosted by Sir Anthony Caro.

Starting as a photo-realist, working from blown-up photographs and a limited colour palette:    "but after a while I realised that it wasn’t very exciting or rewarding, because I always knew how the painting would be resolved. I once spent a whole year on one painting, and although it did win second prize in the Hunting Art Prizes, I realised that there were so many ideas in that painting that were lost forever. I thought that perhaps a better way of working would be to work on several canvases at once.

Now, essentially my paintings are landscapes: they are about places. I am also interested in maps and I like that combination of imagery and the flat, map-like space, with the tensions and relationships that it produces. Each idea begins with a journey, a walk, getting to know a place, and making drawings and taking photographs. Often, it is the shape of a place that is the starting point. Every place has a unique set of shapes that define it. I use those shapes to give structure to the painting and create a dynamic composition".

Personal
Born Blackpool, England 1960
1979-80 Blackpool and Fylde College, Foundation Course
1977-1978 Dept. of Architecture, Manchester University
1980-83 Canterbury College of Art. (B.A. Hons, FIRST CLASS)
1999 Married Denise Hanson and they have 2 children Ollie and Faye
2005 Moved to Cornwall
2007-11 Visiting lecturer at Canterbury Christchurch University
2008 Resident Artist, Bodmin College, Cornwall
2009-10 Visiting Lecturer at Bergen National Academy of the Arts ( Norway)
2009 Artist Talk and Workshop, Canford School, Dorset

Awards
1997 Boise Travel Scholarship to North America, Slade School of Art
1991 Hunting Art Prize – SECOND PRIZE
2012 ‘Canvas & Cream’ Joint Prizewinner

Collections
Lord Gowrie ‘The Street’
Private collections in UK, Europe and America

Solo Exhibitions

2013 'City of Glass' Modern Artists Gallery, Reading, Berkshire,UK
2013 ‘New York Trilogy’ Plough Art Centre, Devon
2012 ‘Colour & Coast’ Hotel Penzance, Penzance, Cornwall
2011 Transatlantic, Hotel Penzance, Penzance, Cornwall
2010 Transatlantic, University of Kent, Canterbury
2008 ‘The Englands’ Modern Artists Gallery, Reading, Berkshire, UK
2007 ‘States of Colour’, Shire Hall Gallery, Bodmin, Cornwall
2003 ‘A m e r i c a s c a p e s’, Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight

Mixed Exhibitions
2012 ‘Canvas & Cream Art Prize’, London, Joint Exhibition with Susan Eyre
2012 Great Atlantic Gallery, Falmouth, ‘Porthleven Paintings’
2012 - present  Modern Artist Gallery,Reading, Berkshire UK 'Penzance Paintings'
2012 Redearth Gallery, Devon, Spring Exhibition
2012 Canvas & Cream Art Prize Exhibition (Shortlisted), London
2011 Great Atlantic Gallery, Falmouth and St Just, Gallery Artist
2011 JUN-AUG The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
2010 OCT Affordable Art Fair, London, c/o Edgar Modern
2010 AUG Summer Exhibition Edgar Modern, Bath
2010 JUL-AUG Caxton Contemporary, Whitstable, Gallery Artist
2010 JUL-OCT Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust, Cornwall (2 PERSON SHOW)
2010 APR 'Colour Cornwall', Bude Castle, Cornwall
2010 JAN 'Alternate' The Exchange Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall
2009 DEC 'Small Paintings' Belgrave Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall
2009 NOV Christmas Exhibition, Brownston Gallery, Devon
2009 AUG Summer Exhibition, Brownston Gallery, Devon
2009 JUN 'Topographies', Caxton Contemporary, Whitstable, Kent
2009 MAY Affordable Art Fair, Bristol, c/o Brownston Gallery
2009 MAY Spring Exhibition, Brownston Gallery, Devon
2009 APR Belgrave Gallery, St.Ives, Cornwall
2009 APR Square Gallery, St.Mawes, Cornwall
2008 DEC Christmas Exhibition, Campden Gallery, The Cotswolds
2008 NOV Edinburgh Art Fair courtesy of Seascape Gallery
2008 NOV Morley Contemporary Art, Torpoint, Cornwall
2008 AUG Summer Exhibition, Thompsons Gallery, London
2008 JUN Somerville Gallery, Plymouth, Devon, Gallery Artist
2008 JUN Summer Exhibition, Sarah Wiseman Gallery, Oxford
2008 ‘March Exhibition’, Innocent Fine Art, Bristol
2007 Christmas show, Innocent Fine Art, Bristol,
2007 Cry of the Gulls Gallery, Brighton
2007 Padstow Fine Art, Padstow, Cornwall, Gallery Artist
2007 Cry of the Gulls Gallery, Fowey, Cornwall, Gallery Artist
2007 Summer Exhibition, Shire Hall Gallery, Bodmin, Cornwall
2007 Group Show, Vitreous Contemporary Art, Truro
2005 The Dentists Surgery, City of London
2003 The Yard Gallery, East Dulwich, London
2003 ‘Above, Beyond & Below’, Modern Artists Gallery,Berkshire UK
2003 Affordable Art Fair, London, c/o Modern Artists Gallery
2001 ‘Waving Not Drowning’, Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight
2000 ‘Top Ten’, Whiteleys Atrium Gallery, London
1999 ‘Walking To The Edge’, Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight (2 PERSON SHOW)
1999 ‘Memory and Place’, Woodlands Gallery, London (4 PAINTERS)
1999 ‘To The Lighthouse’, Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight
1999 ‘Hunting Group’, Royal College of Art, London
1998 Morley Gallery, London (2 PERSON SHOW)
1998 Lorraine Kessler Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.A. (2 PERSON SHOW)
1993 ‘Beyond the Boundaries’, Lorraine Kessler Gallery, Poughkeepsie, U.S.A.
1992 Triangle Artists Workshop, Pine Plains, New York, USA
1992 ‘Hunting Group’, Mall Galleries, London & P.Cardin Espace, Paris, FRANCE
1991 ‘Hunting Group’, Mall Galleries, London
1991 Crypt Gallery, Bloomsbury, London
1989 Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
1986 ‘Small Works’, Curwen Gallery, London
1984 ‘The London Group’, Royal College of Art, London