Sun, Stars, Dawn
In this work, Gillian Ayres conjures a vibrant, tactile world where a seemingly spontaneous array of circular shapes emerges in thick, sumptuous strokes of paint. Traces of her fingertips, pressed into the layers of impasto, bring a visceral intimacy to the piece, revealing the artist’s direct interaction with the canvas. This piece is emblematic of Ayres’s later style, defined by bold, textured layers of paint that signalled a clear departure from the more muted tones of her earlier abstractions. Soft blues, lilacs, and warm oranges render the delicate, ethereal light of dawn evoked in the title, though Ayres was wary of attaching literal meaning to her work. As she once remarked: ‘They’re visual—they’re not literary, they’re not verbal. Paintings always seem to me to be just marks and colour.’ In Sun, Stars, Dawn, the viewer is not merely an observer but is swept into the painting’s immersive, abstract landscape, where the power of colour and form invites a sensory experience free from narrative constraints.
