Sunday, May 31, 2009

Pages from Ayton Volume I, 2006

In honor of my old portfolios being released on Amazon marketplace recently, and their cover thumbnail images appearing (which for some reason takes a while on Amazon, longer than the book titles & descriptions), here are a few selected pages from the Ayton Volume I portfolio. Click on the images for a better view:


Front cover, with Narcissus painting from 1991.


Title/dedication page, with Narcissus drawing from 1991. Dedicated to Diana, my wife, muse, goddess, poet, mother of children, etc.


Page 6, Minotaur from 2006.


Page 14, with Medusa drawing from 1992.


Page 30, with Arbeit Macht Frei (Holocaust) sketch from 2005.


Page 40, with Morning Over Sparta from 2006.


Page 45, with Day of Creation from 2006.


Page 52, with Arch of Debris from 1998.


Page 64 (last page) with Drought from 2005.

Looking back over this portfolio, a few things struck me:

1. It's almost 50-50 color work & monochrome, with color just winning out. That's fine, as that's a fairly representative breakdown of my output -- I tend to do a lot of drawings & large, mononchrome painted pieces.

2. As I released this portfolio in 2006, it's weighted quite a bit toward recent work of that period, as that's what was present in my mind and studio at the time.

3. I tried to represent a couple of major series of works, including the War Room & related work (done a couple of years before) and the Holocaust series (done around 2005). I didn't include the UDHR (human rights) paintings, as they didn't go very well stylistically with the other works.

4. At the time, I cut the selection down to about 64 pieces (the number of pages in the book), for a couple of reasons: the cost of doing a book like this was pretty high, & also to keep the quality of images up to a certain standard. I omitted a lot of very good work. Also, it's been about 3 years since I published this, so I have accumulated a lot more work...a Volume II would not be out of the question.

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