Sun Up

This painting dates from Gillian Ayres’ Bath Academy teaching period and is the first of her works to enter the gallery's collection. Ayres taught at the Bath Academy of Art, one of the most adventurous art schools in the country, for 7 years. Her contemporaries included Robyn Denny, Adrian Heath and her friend Howard Hodgkin. In this work, Ayres uses action painting, combining gestural brushwork and the throwing of pigment at the canvas with the free use of turps as a colour thinner, allowing her to stain, dribble and splatter. The large blue ‘disc’ at the lower right is suggestive of a partly silhouetted orb, the moon perhaps. The resultant effect is to convey a sense of day chasing night in dynamic form.