Malcolm Ashman

Malcolm Ashman was born in Bath, Somerset in 1957.

I am an academician at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA), a member of the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) and President of the Bath Society of Artists. I have exhibited widely over the years including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Threadneedle Prize, the Royal Watercolour Society Competition, the Wells Art Contemporary, the Derwent Drawing Prize and numerous commercial galleries in London and the South of England. My collaboration with Norwegian artist, Inger Karthum resulted in several exhibitions in Norway and at the RWA in 2018, ’Togetherness’.

I paint and draw the landscape and the figure. For the last few years I’ve made small sculptures. I’ve always embraced new ways of working, I’m restless but with purpose. Everything I make is connected, each thread running parallel, informing the others, always pushing forward.

The landscape has always been a great inspiration, somewhere to be quiet and feel part of something larger. During the first half of 2020 the landscape became even more important. Confined to the house for long periods I watched the weather fronts roll in from the west and make their way up the Severn Estuary, drawing the weather filled my lockdown days.

Artists in Lockdown for the Floating Circle, friends of the RWA magazine.

https://floatingcircle-rwa.org/2020/06/17/artists-in-lockdown-malcolm-ashman-rwa/

As a child in a non-artistic household I discovered the available materials to make work were often unconventional, leftovers from parental projects, decorating, practical construction and gardening. I made small constructions of my own from wood, metal, fabric and household paint. Nothing remains of these early endeavours but circumstances have brought me back to this familiar three dimensional ground. Clearing the house of a close relative during 2020, we had to sift through 90 years of collecting. There were many projects started and abandoned, waiting to be picked up again, so much rich material, nothing wasted, just as I remembered it all those years ago. So this is me now, reflecting and planning new work, objects from another life.

M.A. 2023

www.malcolmashman.com

Images (from left)