Andrew James Ward

 Vases are more than just pretty vessels that you use to decorate the living room, whether brimming with flowers or not. Instead, vases are full of magic – something Andrew James Ward learned early on at the age of 6 to be exact. That year, his grandfather brought home a Chinese vase he had acquired on a business trip. What intrigued young Andrew was not so much the fine sheen of the vase’s cool surface or the milky transparency of the porcelain, but its spirit. Inside the vase, his grandfather had told him, there lived a genie. The boy was hooked. 

 

Four decades passed before Andrew James Ward succumbed once again to the seductive power of porcelain. This time it was he who was traveling in Asia. In a museum in Taiwan, he was instantly enchanted by an exhibition of Chinese vases from the Ming Dynasty (1368- 1644). Ward was powerfully moved by their beauty, symmetry and naturalness – or was it perhaps the genie that had once mystified him as a boy? Whatever the reason for his fascination, he has remained a fervent devotee for years. 

 

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. 

 

More peaceful in appearance is his series of seven vases highlighting a traditional chrysanthemum motif. Here, Ward has chosen this classic décor to pay homage to the beauty of Chinese porcelain, depicting thick, symmetrically arranged flower umbels and sinuous arabesques. At the same time as he follows this classical approach, Ward also fits into the long line of western artists who have elevated this motif to the level of a concept, from Claude Monet to Andy Warhol. Again and again, it’s the same subject, but one that results in a completely different image each time, depending on the color, the light, the mood. Additionally, Ward varies the color combinations from vase to vase, from picture to picture. His chrysanthemum vases are a dialogue conducted in oil between the two worlds of Europe and Asia. 

His images are created in aprocess 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 severalexhibitions 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.