The Box: A Life in Colour, Gillian Ayres

This exhibition closes on the 4th October 2026.

This exhibition is upstairs in three galleries.  Her paintings are huge and colourful and very abstract.  There was some quotes on the walls as well and one of these was "Painting is a visual thing, and that's it.  People like to understand, and I wish they wouldn't!  I wish they'd just look!"

For me, this is the whole problem I had with this exhibition.  I am really, really driven to understand.  It's incredibly important to me.  If I can not understand it, then I need to find it attractive.  If I don't find it attractive and I can not understand it, I just don't know what to do with something.  It's like I don't have a hook to get inside.  It leaves me a little lost and confused.

Those paintings of Gillian Ayres that I liked, I really really liked.  A combination of the colours and shapes that just worked and fit what I liked.  The rest of the paintings, I just don't really know what to do with them, what to think of them.  I cannot just look at them and feel them, because I end up more than a little confused.

This is not a fault with Gillian Ayres.  It's not a fault with me either.

I imagine, if I was more educated in art in general.  If I understood process and technique better, that I could appreciate these things and it would be another way in to art for me.

These paintings are huge though.  It wouldn't be easy to display a hundred of her pieces for example.  I imagine that the pieces shown are a good cross section.  I think because of this, it feels like I only liked a very few pieces but the reality is, I liked a good percentage of them.  

Another quote that is central to the exhibition is "To me, art - colour in art - is wonderfully indulging.  I don't see why you shouldn't be filling yourself up, making yourself happy.  Enjoying yourself,  Feasting on beauty, I want art that's going to make me feel heady, in a high-flown way."

It's interesting, because I love colour.  I don't love all colours equally though.  They don't all fill me with joy and I don't know that they give me that heady feel.  It kind of sounds to me like colour was an addiction, a drug to Gillian Ayres.  What a great thing to find so much joy in though.  It's not unhealthy and you can indulge as much as you like, especially as an artist.

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