Tag: Surrealist

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Painting Uncategorized

Ovum Nymphs in progress

In recent months I have been working on a large painting, Ovum Nymphs, which proved to be a challenge. It had been hung a prominent spot in my studio where it was easily viewed but ultimately was over contemplated. Yesterday I realised that its presence had started to sicken me, so I placed it in storage with the hope that it will give me the head space that I need to focus on my other pieces.

Dottie may Aston
180 x 90cm, oil on canvas.

The studio feels refreshed without the painting’s door-sized presence. My struggles with this canvas were partly due to not being comfortable working on this large scale. The sheer amount of paint used makes it discouraging to rework once applied — the background alone is made up of two large tubes of white. After using up all that paint before thinking that maybe it would be better a different shade, my relationship with this painting soured. Giving myself distance from this painting will allow me time to lay aside any negative feelings I have for it. In due course I will be able to rework this painting with a fresh mind. Although I do not dislike this painting in its current state, I have not brought it to a satisfactory conclusion and, I am unable to understand how I can improve it at the moment.

All images are protected under UK copyright law

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Exhibitions Painting Uncategorized

The Banquet

I am happy to share that The Banquet has been accepted into the Vacant Museum‘s virtual exhibition, Cravings.

Dottie may Aston
oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm.

Curb your cravings! Feast your eyes on the delectable female figure laid out for your sole enjoyment. On-the-bone sumptuously plump idea of emaciated perfection. Starve yourself no more!

That was my response to the exhibition brief What do we want, now? What fuels the viscous cycle of wanting and wasting that defines our modern world?

All images are protected under UK copyright law

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Painting Uncategorized

Agored 2021

A closer look at the works accepted into the Agored 2021 exhibition by Galeri Caernarfon.

(04.12.21 – 15.01.22)

Dottie may Aston
Dottie may Aston

Mynediad, Von Restorff, and Nascene of Nostalgia.

All are oil paintings on aluminium panel

Janus

Air-drying clay

Dottie may Aston

I am very grateful to of have this opportunity. Below is my artist statement for the show.

Dottie-may Aston is a painter and sculptor based in Anglesey. She has an idiosyncratic fascination with objects. Interested in how we impose sentiment onto otherwise everyday items, she created delicate personalities within the light-hearted motif of seashells. The paintings and sculptures convey how a memory can become the object itself.

All images are protected under UK copyright law

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Drawing Uncategorized

Drawing at Night

Close Your Eyes to the Truth.

When writing an essay about Stalemate, an etching by Dutch artist Marcelle Hanselaar, I found myself very inspired by the way she works and conducts herself. Hanselaar says that painting is for the day and drawing is for the night, after hearing this, I tried it for myself, and I think she is right. Whenever I paint once the sun has gone down it feels a bit clumsy – the subtlety of colour is hard to detect in unnatural light. I have found that monochrome pencil drawing is about the relationship of tone which works even better at night.

Mollusca Study.

Inspired by Hanselaar’s words, I draw at night when my ideas and imagination are most active. Sometimes I work from reality when I feel I’m unable to depict what I’m imagining. Depicting from imagination is unplanned and flows from my head, to my hand, onto the paper. That is how the image below came into existence.

Somnum Murex

© 2021 Dottie-May Aston.

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Painting Uncategorized

Thorn in my Background

While painting the Mollusca Femella series I struggled with the backgrounds – due to my lack of confidence with light colours ‘light’ within context to my past work.

After I had painted the subjects, using a very deep blue, I darkened the background. Subsequently the subtle colours of the figure disappeared. The focus of the painting became unclear. Thinking that if the figure was darker it would balance the painting, I exaggerated the shadows, only to immediately regret doing so and undid it. A few days later it struck me that it might not be the figure but the background that is the wrong tone or colour. Unsure of how I could rectify this I commenced a sequence of background painting, first warming it up, not liking that, I added the shadow of the subject by darkening areas around the shell. Unsure if this was working for the painting, I then left the studio to go home so that I may see it with fresh eyes the following day.

My background obsession went on for weeks, too warm, too cool. I even painted it gold at one point. I don’t think it occurred to me that neither the background nor the figure had to be dark. I forgot to look at the painting with fresh eyes and was holding on to what worked for previous paintings. After finally realising this it gave me the confidence to lighten it, using the same blue of the first lawyer with white and a dash of yellow. The lightening of the background was a very gradual process, but it slowly, surely started to fit the figure until we have the blue you seem now. From this experience I realised how timid I have become with the paint, I learned to not be afraid of it and treat the paint as if it were my friend.

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Bellow I have added some pictures comparing the dark background to the light. Which do you prefer?

^ Mollusca Femella I ^

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^ Mollusca Femella III – Beginning > to > finish ^

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I hope you enjoyed this post!

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Categories
Painting

The Shunga Occurrence

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I’ve always been a fan of this print; The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife by Hokusai, the image was first published in 1814. Although I wasn’t thinking of Hokusai at the time of painting the first few of these images, after I noticed this visual link I decided to look into these prints further. Turns out that The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife is part of the ukiyo-e movement that sought to express an idealisation of contemporary urban life and appeal to the new chōnin class. It was also Shunga, a Japanese term for erotic art, that was enjoyed by all social groups in the Edo period.

© 2020 Ameonna, Dottie-May Aston.

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I then came across something called Ero Guro or the English-Japanese highbred name, Wasei-eigo, ero from “ero(tic)”, Guro from “gro(tesque)”, and nansensu from “nonsense”. The “grotesqueness” implied in the term refers to things that are malformed, unnatural, or horrific. I think this unique name could be applied to the majority of my work.

© 2020 Ameotoko, Dottie-May Aston.

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This led me to continue with this painting series as a contemporary Shunga/Ero guro series. Looking deeper into the human fixation with making erotic connections with cephalopods, in a somewhat Surrealist style. 

© 2020 Gigolo, Dottie-May Aston.

I decided to name these paintings after Japanese folklore, mythology and, other intriguing stories that I have always found fascinating. The ones I’ve done so far are titled, Amabie’s Kiss, Gigolo, Ameonna, and Ameotoko. I plan to repaint some of these at some point and continue more paintings relating to this recent research.

© 2020 Amabie’s Kiss, Dottie-May Aston.

I named this painting, Amabie’s Kiss. Amabie originating from a Japanese legend of a mermaid or merman who has three legs, and allegedly emerges from the sea prophesying either an abundant harvest or an epidemic. The figure to the left I have painted as Amabie, who is spreading the epidemic in the form of a kiss to the jellyfish.

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“I have drawn things since I was six. All that I made before the age of sixty-five is not worth counting. At seventy-three I began to understand the true construction of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes, and insects. At ninety I will enter into the secret of things. At a hundred and ten, everything–every dot, every dash–will live”

-Hokusai Katsushika