“Secluded within their shell homes longing for freedom, stretching out they still cannot escape this attachment – expressing themselves through dance like positions.”
Shells, molluscs and natural oddities, these, combined with a delicate eye for the female form, are the essence of Dottie May Aston’s series Mollusca Femella. Born in the Forest of Dean and based in West Wales, May-Aston plays with expressive graceful forms melting into shells, a poignant comment on the current limits on everyday freedoms. Using thin layers of oil paint, she paints surreal images of imagination. -from my bio on the Lone Worlds website.
My artist statement for the Lone Worlds, group show I exhibited hosted a at The Stainable Studios, in Cardiff.
As we become separated from our expressions and the fundamental contact that we as humans crave, we become objects. My world within the medium of oil paintings is where the human form is one with the shell that protects but also burdens them. Secluded within their shell homes longing for freedom, stretching out they still cannot escape this attachment – expressing themselves through dance like positions. I have been working sporadically since the end of the first national lockdown on this painted series. During that time, I suffered from an artistic block that lasted several weeks. Uninspired by the confines of my flat I spent a great deal of time exploring my collection of various natural curiosities – which includes a variety of shells. Originally, I was born in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, I’m now based in the coastal town of Aberystwyth. Taken by the natural beauty of the area, and inspiration from natural curiosities that I’ve gathered on my walks along the coast, I created sculptures built upon the remains of various remains of creatures, most recently molluscs. Musing upon these objects, my mind often drifted into a surreal world of possibility. Once the fresh air of inspiration came back to me, I began to bring to life these fantasies. These paintings are different from what I have previously produced as the tonal range is more limited and higher key. It has taken a lot of courage to move away from the dark backgrounds of my previous works sparking a new stage in my work.
Dottie-may Aston 
2 replies on “Mollusca Femella”
[…] I surprised myself with the amount of enjoyment I got from these paintings, I had never really thought much of still life. But whilst painting I found satisfaction in their subtle positions and giving them personalities. After that term I drifted away from still life until the first national lockdown. When, for a painting workshop, I painted a bat – I will tell you more about that painting another day. After that I started to paint the objects around me. I settled for a while on the inspiration of shell formations – find out more about these paintings here. […]
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[…] realised my paintings are imitations of shells. This muse first found its way into my work with the Mollusca Femella series. Moving on to using a smaller scale I started to paint the surreal depiction of a shell […]
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