KERR ASHMORE ARTIST

Contemporary : Abstract : Landscape

Kerr Ashmore is a British contemporary landscape and abstract artist whose work has featured in many exhibitions across UK, Europe and the US and is held in collections worldwide. Her work is beautifully aesthetic, often large in scale, and always emotionally powerful.

Although there is no doubt that land, sea and sky play a major role in her work, Ashmore’s process is both emotive and narrative at once, her compelling and immersive works juxtapose richly harmonious journeys and instinctively orchestrated moments of light and dark. Her paintings reach out to share warmth and she evokes an uplifting sense of hope even with her darkest of pieces.

Working primarily in natural and sustainably sourced pigments, inks and dyes with acrylic binders and glazes there are certainly subtle notes of the old masters in Kerr’s work. From the timeless chiaroscuro of Rembrandt, the hypnotic mood of Rothko to the depths and pure joy of a Turner, Kerr’s rich, multilayered abstracts and landscapes meld the classic with the contemporary and are sure to continue to delight collectors for years to come.

Kerr grew up in North Yorkshire under the drama of northern skies. With the moors to her south, the powerful North Sea to her east and the contrasting industrial landscape to her north, she was surrounded by a wealth of inspiration. She found much needed solitude in the arts from a very early age. In her thirties and for almost two decades Kerr lived and travelled extensively throughout Europe, absorbing the land, sea and sky and fully focussing on her artistic practice. She studied the works of the Old Masters - as well as those of her favourite modern and contemporary painters - and continued to master her own craft, adopting a variety of techniques and blending them with her own.

“Each aspect of my creative practice – whether the written word, musical composition, photography or painting, drives the other…always in a kind of perpetual motion.

“I experience sound and colour on a kinaesthetic and emotional level (a type of synaesthesia) so music is a powerful and fundamental part of my process. It can propel me into journeys on an unconscious level, inspiring spontaneous narrative…it’s here my pen comes into play and I write poetry or prose. My painting process is intuitive, emotive and highly energised. In the beginning both narrative and music very often direct the mood, colour and form of a new body of work and from then on I allow myself certain freedoms, fully immersing myself in the journey whilst maintaining the important balance between unconscious instinct and conscious consideration and control.

“Whether I’m working on a landscape or an expressive abstract piece, it’s the music that steers me through”.

Kerr works from her studios in the Northeast of England and the southern Spanish Mountains.

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