David Ashwell

Over a decade ago British expat David Ashwell retired from the business of directing TV spots and settled into the gentlemanly business of painting the Malibu coast, where he had long since settled. Not surprisingly he has shown the grace to bring the formal skills long honed in the interest of Diet Coke sales and casting the best possible light on celebrity pitchmen and women to bear on a landscape that is only too easy to love. If the idea of a successful filmmaker spending his later years in homage to some of the world’s most attractive, not to mention expensive real estate pisses you off, this show will make you bristle. But if Ashwell cannot be placed among the art world’s cutting edge elite, he rightfully does not attempt to be something that he is not. This work cannot be dismissed as trivial.

The spirit of realism is present in this painting in terms of physical perception. The play of light and shadow is primary, providing the expressive chord the artist wishes to strike in response to the scene he selects to depict. It also very much informs the way a painting is composed. Most frequently Ashwell gives you a direct entry to an image, seducing you to take in the whole right away. He employs a variety of devices to artfully break symmetries and create multiple points of interest that engage the eye and make you spend time absorbing the details. A “View from the Latigo Studio,” his Point Dume home base, is a rich example of this. The triptych is a view looking out through a bank of windows to the sea, with the coastline fading into the distance. An afternoon sun creates powerful contrasts of cast shadows, and a handful of still life objects sit on the studio floor to tell us something about the artist and bring you back to the interior space. The distinct upward tilt of the two side panels give the bank of windows a concave shape, which with two open windows on either end becomes a robust metaphorical embrace of the great outdoors.

Color is certainly important in much of his work, through light precedes it. “Across the Bay” announces Ashwell’s indebtedness to Monet in no uncertain terms, the paint handling and Santa Monica skyline evoking the master’s take on the Houses of Parliament in particular. Brushwork is well orchestrated, but can be predictable. Ashwell favors broad expanses of sky, water, or beach to be lively, often laying in broken colors to be mixed by viewers’ eyes. Skies are made up of thickets of small strokes that have the effect of pouring down towards the horizon line. The ocean is pacific and benign, reflecting dappled light that hints at the subtle power of currents beneath the surface, and lapping waves above. Civilization occupies a small but distinct twilight zone between the dual vastness. Views of the human presence may be up close, or at a distance, and are most prominently of the architecture of the coast. It is neither engulfed by nature, nor do these modest but venerated artifacts desecrate nature. Ashwell’s paintings politely celebrate having come to terms with it.

DAVID ASHWELL