TADWICK, SEPTEMBER - PROVENANCE ROYAL ACADEMY

Malcolm Ashman RWA,RBA,ROI Ashman's paintings portray an intuitive response to his surroundings. Through the expressive and decisive nature of each brush stroke and the vivid energy of his colour palette, his work embodies each scee with the experience and memory of its physicality. Such scenes intertwine with invention and thought; elements of each study a creation of the mind. The West Country hillside is presented through expressive marks, an abstract representation of the moment once shared between his senses and the open space. Such scenes look to stretch on for as far as the imagination allows, with a scarcity of walls, fences, and manmade limitation on the line of horizon. The eye travels joyfully over ambiguous and hinted shapes. The debris of memory is infused with nostalgia and life through ambience of mark and composition. Beginning at the Somerset College of Art, Ashman has had work exhibited for such well-established awards as the Threadneedle Prize alongside group exhibitions in London with the Royal Society of Portrait painters, the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Institute of Oil painters. Ashman's practise now reaches a vast and eager audience, his style both critically respected and distinctly recognisable.