Force of nature

Jul 16 2008 by David Whetstone, The Journal

In Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery, Yorkshireman Ashley Jackson tells David Whetstone about his art and his life.

THEY are all watercolours and painted in what’s called the English School, which means there’s no white paint on them, or black. To get the snow, what you do is pull your moist brush across.

“Everything is made in Great Britain. The paper is made in Wells, Somerset, the brushes are made in Bracknell, Berkshire, and the frames have been put together in Newcastle; well, just outside – they’ve done it for me for the last 15 years.

“These are very large watercolours. You’ll not see watercolours as large as this without any gimmicks on them. Some people use masking fluid, some people will scratch.

“The paper is made specially for me. They send it up to me in Holmfirth (West Yorkshire). It’s what’s called Double Elephant, three foot six by two foot six.

“In London, they always used to say, ‘To hang one of yours, we have to take down three others’. I always used to say, ‘You can’t paint the north of England with a ruler. You have to paint it big. The Pennines are huge.’

“These are my soul paintings. I hope no-one calls my paintings pictures. Pictures are mechanically constructed. These are the feeling you get when you go up on the moor and the light draws you in. You feel there’s somebody there far greater than you, call it God or call it Mother Nature.”

As forces of nature go, Ashley Jackson could give anybody a run for their money. He’s a man who can pack a lot into a little – the grandeur of the moors into a painting three foot six by two foot six and the essence of 67 years lived into a meagre 30 minutes, during which time I hardly have to ask a question. “You must have heard all this before?” I say to Claudia Berettoni, introduced as “my manager and also my daughter”, while the artist is having his photograph taken. “No, it’s different every time,” she insists.

Mr Jackson has a deep well of anecdotes. He even has one for me which he says he’s never shared before, which dates back to a visit to 10 Downing Street in the late 1960s when Prime Minister Harold Wilson (who owned an Ashley Jackson painting) lamented to him LS Lowry’s refusal to accept a knighthood.

“I went down on one knee and said, ‘You can always give it to me instead’.”

The PM didn’t take him up on this offer. On the other hand, LS Lowry always insisted on addressing Ashley Jackson – then in his 20s – as “Sir”.

“I knew LS Lowry very well. He came to my gallery in Barnsley – I started out from Barnsley – with his chauffeur and bought one of my paintings. That was when he had his paintings on stamps and I was just starting out. I’ve been self-employed for 46 years – and married for 46 years. I lived off my wife’s earnings. She was chief clerk in the Co-op Insurance in Barnsley.”

Presumably wife Anne doesn’t feel sour about this. Her husband’s big paintings now sell for £35,000, although he also sells smaller ones for £6,000 and “sepias for the people in the street who can’t afford the big paintings but can afford £400”.

It’s not about the money, though, Ashley insists. As ever, he elaborates: “I was a Roman Catholic altar boy until I was 22. From the age of 14 I’d see the dead being brought in for a requiem and it hit me that I’d be there one day. If you want to be an artist or whatever you want to be, you have to get on your bike. I went to art school as an apprentice sign writer and glass gilder. I think everyone should have an apprenticeship. It’s the greatest ship that ever sailed the ocean.

“Now I’m a wealthy man – not in the sense of money but because I am doing the thing I always wanted to do.”

You feel that if Ashley Jackson were cut in half – God forbid – you would find the word “Yorkshire” running through him like a stick of rock. In fact, he didn’t see the county until he was nine years old. “I’m a Colonial, born in Penang, Malaysia. My father was in British Intelligence in the Far East. He escaped from four prison camps but then they made him dig his own grave and machine gunned him into it. He was 27. I still have all his cards sent home to my mother: ‘Love to Ashley, Mum and yourself’. I wrote in my diary, ‘I’ve got a Japanese camera when I could have had you’.”

With the fall of Singapore, the family was put on a ship to India. Ashley’s mother remarried a Yorkshireman, a sergeant major in the Royal Artillery, and they wound up in the county whose merits he will extol until the cows come home. “We lived in a little house in Linthwaite and I remember seeing little trains going across the moor. It was like being in Lilliput. I went, ‘wow’.”

With a single-minded determination to capture that wow factor, it set him on course to becoming an artist – since when he has appeared on television, in books and in newspapers and magazines.

Watercolours by Ashley Jackson are on show at the Laing Art Gallery until October 5. A famous and enthusiastic educator, Ashley will give three watercolour painting demonstrations in the gallery on August 9, September 13 and October 4. To book a free place, call (0191) 232-7734.