RSVP Report

Artist ANNE ASHTON captures the spiritual essence of nature.  She makes us ‘see’ the ordinary things around us, be it a leaf as it falls free-form, or the blazing, brazen glory of dahlias.  LES EDITIONS PLEIN SUD offers us a lovely look at Ashton’s work, from 1989 to today.(You can buy this lovely little book here….and nowhere else…which is a shame!) It would make the perfect gift for anyone. The simple beauty of the images is hypnotic.  One gazes on..and on. Adding to the lure is the history Anne relates.  She captures skies on her road trips – she is also a musician. And, wow, what skies. Wispy, water-coloury type clouds waft across the bluest of skies. They are done in oils, proof of Anne’s mastery of the medium. (She also teaches painting at McGill University.) ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’, so here are a few fabulous pages from her book, Wonderful.

Wahine

Her latest work, Enduro, is actually 17 pieces, placed in an ”installation” complete with a bench-like altar. (Actually, it is a bench, but you have to see it to understand the reverence of the altar-ego). Each work is unframed. Postcards around the edge. The centre, unlike the Yeats poem, holds. Indeed, it grabs our eye as we take in Anne’s cosmos of interconnected, ethereally elegant elements.

Enduro

There is a lovely light bathing all the images in this work.  Enduro is clouds, planets, a spindly daddy long legs, bones, seared-white skulls, and skies – with amazing clouds. There is an incredible lightness of being: a suggestion of the interconnectivity of it all:  a special spirituality that encourages us to look at things around us.  To “see.” Hopefully something more than a text message.

Chula