I work in various sculptural mediums, from welded metal to concrete casting and ceramics. Many of my sculptures are created from or include found objects. Some are perhaps better described as assemblages and some are temporary and never intended for sale.
Found objects and materials, cement clay created from recycled cement
I used materials collected during walks before Covid and experimented with cement clay.
Mother Earth is a culmination of my experiments with cement casting and crystal glazes. The blues and greens of the ceramic surface represents the colours seen in orbital satellite images of the Earth and the grey grout represents the scars of over population and pollution that is now very visible in space. The figure has feminine connotations with Mother Earth/Mother Nature and the prone position again symbolises the state of our planet - it is crying out for help!
Cement, hand-made ceramic skin
I made this experimental sculpture as I tried to come to terms with the level of violence, drug and alcohol abuse I witnessed at first hand. For example, one of my old school mates, a very successful entrepreneur and a happy go lucky sort of bloke, hit bad times. Faced with the death of a close family member he turned to drink that quickly led to a ban for drinking and driving. It wasn't long before his business failed and despite support from friends and family he descended into a life of heavy drugs.The cocktail of drink drugs made him paranoid and very violent. He quickly exhausted his savings and turned to theft to fuel his needs and it wasn't long before he ended up in prison. About the same time, a fellow student of mine went out with friends for a night to celebrate his birthday.
ModRoc, broken bottles, syringes and a knife
Ashley creating the sculpture
A walk in the woods is one in a series of eight cylindrical sculptures that together form a circular monument; a Twentieth Century monument to the environment. A reminder of how we are destroying this planet. For example, many different objects could be cast into a single sculpture and even when hidden 'inside' it was easy to carve back into the sculpture and reveal them: I was also able carve messages into it, similar to how people carve words and symbols into trees. On several 'trips', for example along a disused railway track, I found charred remains of cars and rubbish.
Found objects cast in surgical plaster
Found objects cast in surgical plaster
Rubbish collected after a short walk through a field
Use these sculptures to experiment with ideas and/or process for larger finished works.
Rubbish collected after a short walk through a field
Modeled in clay and cast in cement
Handmade tiles
“One ends up with a landscape one has never seen before but it is presumably the landscape you were feeling as you started the painting.”
“Unless we use a tool we do not truly understand it and we learn by using.”
“The contemporary is the one whose eyes are struck by the beam of darkness that comes from his own time.”
“...the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”
“Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented [...] It can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as “different.” ”
“Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented [...] It can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as “different.” ”
“When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.”
“I’m interested in playing with different platforms that aren’t really supposed to be in art, or be the art.”
“It is now not just important, but essential, that institutions stop marginalizing online or non-object-based practices.”
“That we are supposed to take care to recycle has almost reached the level of a duty or moral law, and this moral law circulates in the way we symbolize acts of consumption.”
“Disease ecologists believe that if we continue on this pathway, this year’s pandemic will not be a one-off event.”
“If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”
“We need all kinds of artists. We have no need to destroy drawing. We lose so much. This wouldn't happen in music.”
“Like an apparition, something totally unforeseen, possibly lasting for just seconds, may spring from making a few brush strokes, establishing an area of truth which ‘might actually expand into a whole truth’.”
“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.”
“When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work... it's saying I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.”
“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”
“I think that you have to be a bit one track to be an artist...”
“Many of my best subjects have resulted from looking back on past journeys.”
“I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.”
“…Every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all - my head is bursting…”
“Painters must speak through paint, not through words.”
“The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.”
“It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.”
“Every picture shows a spot with which the artist has fallen in love.”
“All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.”
“Listen to the advice of others, but follow only what you understand and can unite in your own feeling. Be firm, be meek, but follow your own convictions. It is better to be nothing than an echo of other painters.”
“The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.”
“Beauty in art is truth bathed in an impression received from nature. I am struck upon seeing a certain place. While I strive for conscientious imitation, I yet never for an instant lose the emotion that has taken hold of me.”
“Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.”
“Everything you can imagine is real.”
“Creativity takes courage.”
“Never lose the first impression which has moved you.”
“That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist.”
“There is no must in art because art is free.”
“Painting is the most marvellous activity humans have invented.”
“There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it.”
“Reality is one part of art; feeling completes it...”
“You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.”
“In art, theories are as useful as a doctor's prescription; one must be sick to believe them.”
“You must plan to be spontaneous.”
“What is art? We ought to very simply let it be what the artist says it is.”
© 2024 Ashley Baldwin-Smith
Designed and built by Ashley Baldwin-Smith
