Andrew James Ward

 Ward started painting vases himself – and still paints them to this day. Gigantic vases, on canvases over two meters high. He paints them using oils that he applies directly, with hands and fingers. To do this, he reaches deep into the paint and, like a potter, designs the vessels on the canvas, his entire body aquiver, as if the vases take shape from a dance. This technique creates structures that give the painted vessels an impressive plasticity and spatial presence. They are expansive in the truest sense of the word, and yet at the same time they create mysterious spaces, making you wonder: What could be inside them? 

 

Andrew James Ward’s vases are beguiling vessels that bring culture and nature together. When he adorns one of his vases with a dragon motif, it is not just a fang-gnashing monster that you see on the shapely vessel. The mythical creature seems to be composed entirely of gnarled branches and storm-driven waves. Through this painting style, Ward is in fact recalling his childhood in Scotland, where as a boy he spent many hours at the seashore, awestruck by the sea’s mighty vastness and experiencing storms whose thundering power deeply shaped his psyche. 

His images are created in a process of searching, layer by layer, until the final color combination is found. The arabesque structures between the thick flower umbels remind you of endlessly meandering paths that you would follow, filled with passion as you stroll onward, or – taking inspiration from the artist – dance through a labyrinth that is teeming with beauty and surprises. 

 

Andrew James Ward was born in Cheadle Hume near Manchester in 1954 and grew up in Scotland. He has traveled extensively throughout Africa and Asia, and from 1982 to 2005 he lived in Switzerland. Today he is at home near Frankfurt. His works can be found in numerous international collections and have been shown at several exhibitions around the world, including at the Eden Court Arts Centre in Inverness, at Georgetown University in Washington, at the National Museum in Manila, and several times in the sculpture park of the Schönthal Monastery.