Paintings
I work in a variety of mediums and styles, landscapes to mixedmedia abstract paintings created from found objects and materials.
I have categorised my work below:
I work in a variety of mediums and styles, landscapes to mixedmedia abstract paintings created from found objects and materials.
I have categorised my work below:
I painted this scene after a camping trip to West Runton, during which I enjoyed walks, stopping frequently to make studies, along the various trails through the Pretty Corner woods.
Oil on triple primed canvas
45 x 60 cm
Whilst driving up to Edinburgh, I decided to take the old and more scenic route through Northumbria. I couldn't resist stopping, near Powburn, to take in this scene as the morning sun threatened to melt the snow.
Oil on triple primed canvas
40 x 50 cm
During a walk through the old woodland at Pretty Corner, near Sheringham, I stopped to record this old tree.
Oil on triple primed canvas
50 x 40 cm
Oil on canvas
After a stormy night camping at East Runton, I rushed out the following morning along the cliffs towards West Runton beach to capture the scene as the sea calmed and clouds gave way to a beautiful new day.
45 x 60 cm
Sold
Oil on canvas
A lovely morning walk along Gwithian beach, Cornwall as the tide goes out.
45 x 60 cm
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
I painted this oil painting in September after a camping and sketching trip to Hemsby.
40cm x 60cm
A crisp morning walk across Coe Fen, looking towards St John's College, Cambridge.
Oil on ampersand board
12 x 16 inches
Sold
Oil on linen canvas
I really enjoy walking from Newnham meadows car park to Cambridge centre passing through Lammas Land, Coe Fen and Sheep's Green. The canvas is sized to the golden ratio and I used a fibonacci spiral to plan the position of the trees..
40 x 65 cm
I painted this fenland landscape after an early winter walk from Lode to Bottisham Lock, just as the sun started to set. For this oil painting I used limited palette of high quality oil paints on an artist quality braced canvas.
Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches
“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.”
© 2026 Ashley Baldwin-Smith
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