Tony Ashton Contmeporary Art

Mechanical Gordian Knot. 2005.

39x24 inches.
Acrylic painting on board.

This painting plays with spatial ambiguity. Which plane is in front and which behind and isn’t the opposite true in another part of the painting? The inclusion of illusionistic painting within the shapes helped to lead to my HYBRID paintings.

Price £1700

Venus. 1999.
The Goddess of Love and Female Sexuality

72x48 inches.
Acrylic painting on board.

The cross section of a womb also looks like Taurus the Bull and Hathor the Egyptian Goddess. It also resembles the bull's head Picasso made from a bicycle seat. The falopian tubes become the weighing scales of Egyptian Goddess MAAT. Note her feather that she used to weigh the heart of the Pharaoes. (It's on the top of the fallopian tube).

Price £7000

A Little Bit of Art History part 4. 2006.

39x24 inches.
Acrylic painting on board.

This is made up of painted copies of artists that interest me. I decided to include Ancient Greek and Egyptian art, as well as examples of Indian and African art. Moorish patterns jostle with Jasper Johns, Brice Marden, The Boyle family, Picasso, and de Kooning. My Venus is included.

Price £2500

Miss Ann Ford. 1997.
A HYBRID painting, (after Gainsborough).

Acrylic painting on board.

My HYBRID paintings apply the geometric shapes of my abstract Golden Section work to the realism of the Old Masters they are based on. Aspects of Cubism and Surrealism help subvert the illusion of the familiar.

Price £700

Endangered Species Series No.1. 1990.

Still using the Golden Section I adopted a photo-realist technique.

15x24 inches.
Acrylic painting on board.

This work makes connections with Tuna fishing nets and dolphins; the burning of the rainforests for cattle pastures and beef burgers; and how the local tribes are made homeless. Meanwhile the West squanders recourses and indulges in obscene weapons of destruction like chemical warfare.

Price £1000.

Who Killed Steve Biko? 1986.

39x24 inches.
Acrylic painting on board.

Following on from my Martin Luther King Series, I made paintings and prints featuring other heroes like Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko.

I was impressed by the way Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela changed what seemed at the time intractable. Steve Biko was a very intelligent man who frightened the white majority by his clear thinking. He could have been instrumental in bringing Apartheid to any end. The painting shows those responsible for his death and their callous comments at the time.

£1700.

Deep Blue. 2004.
A body print.

120x72 inches.
Acrylic painting on board.

Deep Blue is made up of three prints from the body, abstract expressionist brush strokes and prints from bubble wrap. I used my own body to make the prints, unlike Yves Klein who used female models as brushes so as to be detached. I like the hands on approach.

It is open to interpretation. Some see Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs and mummies; others see bodies floating in the sea; but all agree that there is something awe- inspiring, something spiritual, something eternal emanating from this painting.

Price £10,000.

Jupiter.

68x48 inches.
Acrylic painting and clothing on board.

It rules Sagittarius, the archer whose weapon is an arrow. the greek god zeus conquered the titans using wind and storms, but later became sunny and beneficient. The bringer of jollity and altruism.

Price £7000.

The Deposition 1. 2009.
A HYBRID painting. (After Caravaggio).

15x24 inches.
Acrylic painting on board.

An aspect of Post Modernism is to look at art of the past and re-interpret it for the modern world. For the flesh areas in ‘The Entombment’ I have used Expressionist brushwork within the geometric shapes.

Price £1000.

Judith and Holofernes. 2007.
A HYBRID painting. (After Rosso).

8x13 inches.
Acrylic painting on board.

The lines and diagonals of the Golden Section structure the figurative elements. Flesh is blank to heighten the alienation of the savage scene.

Judith saved her nation from invasion by making the enemy leader, Holofernes, so drunk that she was able to decapitate him.

Price £700.