This February Beside The Wave London will be revealing a monumental new painting from a critically acclaimed series of work twenty-one years in the making. An exclusive preview evening at the gallery on Friday 5thFebruary will unveil the artwork, ‘Nightview: Reflections III’ by multi-award-winning artist Ashley Hold.
The work, itself taking three years to paint, is from the artist’s celebrated ‘Nightview’ series that started life in 1995. The painting is the third of the series depicting the view from the artist’s room where he lived from 1987 to 2004. Catching the short period of twilight seen from the window, the painting captures the landscape about to be enveloped by darkness, overlaid by the fragmented double-reflections of the artist and the interior of his room on the window. Painted from observation and sized at exactly the same scale as the glass of the window, the long process to create this complex composition involved continually revising and re-working the painting “in the attempt to resolve the tension between my commitment to visual fact and my concern for pictorial structure”
“This work represents the convergence of a number of interests; the nocturnal landscape, the studio interior and the self-portrait in one image.
‘The figure in Nightview can be seen as part of the landscape, looking in towards the viewer or, separated from the landscape by the window and looking out; therefore the figure can be seen as looking both inwards and outwards simultaneously. This, for me, is a metaphor for the creative process. This painting references, both directly and indirectly, Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Mists”. (Ashley Hold, 2016).
The previous two large-scale portraits in the series were exhibited at Edinburgh Art Fair in 2011 and 2012 and received critical acclaim, admired by dealers and collectors. Both pieces are now within private collections after selling immediately at the fair’s private view.
The artist, Ashley Hold, is a multi award winning painter and a full member of the Royal West of England Academy. He graduated with an honours and masters degree at the Falmouth School of Art, where he is now a lecturer. His impressive exhibition history includes the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in 1994 and 1999.
This latest painting ‘Nightview: Reflections III’ will be revealed at an exclusive preview evening at Beside The Wave London’s gallery in Primrose Hill, London on Friday 5th February, 6-8pm. The evening will mark the beginning of an exhibition of the artist’s work ‘Ashley Hold: Nightview’ at the gallery, running from 6th – 25th February 2016, which will also feature smaller works from the series. To receive an invitation to the preview evening, where the artist will be in attendance, contact the gallery via email gallery@beside-the-wave.co.uk or call 0207 722 4161.
