CREATIVE COLLISIONS, 25.10.2013 – 04.11.2013

This painting is about that moment of impact that gives you the unexpected – so that when two particles collide, you don’t know where the fragments are going to land nor what’s going to happen. Multiple collisions come out of the scale of the painting; when viewing, it is impossible to take it all in at once. Every time you look at it, your eyes see different elements, which collide in new ways. ‘As a painter, I want the audience to find their own combinations and collisions, to create their own relevance’.

The theme of the painting is ‘Collision’. This impact is about change and transformation - when particles crash together, they create energy and send shock waves beyond the expected. On the canvas, old bonds are broken to form new ones. Collision turns one thing into another, reminiscent of Alchemy and of Jesus turning water into wine. Looking at some of the images individually, you can see the most shocking collision of our lifetimes – the twin towers - in several of the little paintings. Ripple-effects, beyond what we could expect - the images are expressive and the application of the materials on the canvas are colliding and exploding. Following in the footprints of Expressionist painters.

This painting was created specifically to hang along the outside of the Gardiner Chantry Chapel in Winchester Cathedral. Inspired by this spiritual location Lucy Ash wanted to create a work that was both colourful and mysterious, and close to the church's historic connection with art. The idea was for the painting to echo the stained-glass windows that illuminate the Cathedral. This has been achieved by creating 288 fragmentations - or small paintings each with their own story - within a very large (5’ 6” x 7’) painting - and surrounding them with a rich crimson that suggests the deep red colour of religious robes, often seen in religious paintings such as Velázquez's magnificent painting of Pope Innocent X. Colour is something Lucy Ash instinctively uses in her work. It has an instant effect of conveying feeling – as Matisse said, "feeling needs colour to be complete and colour needs feeling to have inner meaning".

Not knowing where colliding particles will land, not controlling them and not worrying about the rules is part of Lucy Ash’s creative process. This use of materials is how she works; ‘it tied in perfectly with the theme of collision. I work with mixed media, usually oil paints, spray paint and ink. This painting is painted on linen with oil and spray-paint. The process of using mixed media is very exciting - there is the wonderful thing of how the oil paint and spray paint interact, it’s not entirely predictable and is a process of discovery, where I may not know what I’m doing but find out by doing it - and being brave’.

CHALK SHARING HERITAGE, 10.10.2015 – 7.11.2015

The title of this work for Winchester Cathedral is ‘Sum of Parts’. The artwork is about chalk. It is a triptych that examines the three components of chalk: carbon, oxygen, and calcium. Within the frames the viewer will experience both the separation and combination of these fundamental elements.

Lucy Ash: ‘I like working in series so, when I made the discovery that chalk was made up of the 3 elements, Oxygen, Calcium and Carbon, I knew I wanted to paint a triptych.’ The triptych allows us to consider the constituents of chalk and how the 3 elements differ: we can see their separation and combination and can make comparisons between the component parts as well as imagine how they transform as they come together - one thing into another - in the material we know well. It also gives us a sense of the time that it takes for chalk to evolve.

Chalk is formed when tiny organisms fall to the sea floor and consolidate and compress – slowly - over time - into chalk rock. The formation is about change and transformation.

Oxygen presents part of a landscape – there are references to plant life, to breathing, to lungs, to organisms and to sea life. The artwork is bluer and greener than the other two.

Calcium is produced in the explosions at the end of the lives of massive stars; in some of the artwork-segments we can see fragments of the universe spilling out towards us. There is a centre area of fluidity that suggests pouring milk and references to bony structures and shells created over the course of geologic time.

Carbon, this element is the chemical basis of all known life. Its different forms are graphite, diamond and amorphous carbon, the name used for coal and soot and other impure forms of carbon that are neither graphite nor diamond. The forms vary widely. Graphite is opaque, black, and soft, diamond is transparent and incredibly hard. The artwork is dark and shows these different forms that coalesce over time with calcium and oxygen to become chalk.

This triptych was created specifically to hang along the outside of the Gardiner Chantry Chapel in Winchester Cathedral. The space lends itself to a triptych since it is divided into three arches, with the bishop located in the centre.

The triptych-form echoes the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity, as well as The Holy Trinity to which Winchester Cathedral is dedicated. Added to this, the triptych-form is often used for altarpieces in churches and cathedrals and reflects the structure of ecclesiastical buildings as well as their stained-glass windows. The cathedral is a place for the contemplation of the cycle of Life. The ancient, slow formation and dissolution of chalk is part of that cycle. This work stands in a site where time is both physically present and seems to stand still, where there is a connection to something much larger than us and where reflection feels natural.

The panels are painted on linen with layer on layer of oil paint and in some places a touch of spray-paint, making the work as much about the texture as about muted colour. The artwork feels tactile and chalky, in the way that chalk is ... chalky.

RESPONSE

The triptych ‘Sum of Parts’ drew responses from two fellow 10 days artists. Kathy Oldridge an installation artist and filmmaker created a triptych film ‘Chalk | Sum of Parts’ that draws on the imagery and ideas from the triptych. Amanda Oosthuizen a poet and writer based in Winchester, was inspired to write ‘Chalk Trilogy’ (Girl Wrapped in Beads, Oxygen; Girl Who Climbed, Calcium; Girl in a Borrowed Cloak, Carbon).