Lure
1963
Ayres, Gillian
The painter, Gillian Ayres, is concerned with colour, light and texture. In 'Lure' she has referenced the work of a number of London-based painters who began to incorporate oval patches of colour - which became known as 'blimps' - into their colour-field paintings of the early 1960s. The shapes in 'Lure' directly recall these 'blimps'. The title of this work hints at the seductive atmosphere created by these joyous, free form blobs of colour.
Ayres made her first abstract painting in 1952. Around 1956 she saw the photographs of the American action painter, Jackson Pollock, at work on canvases positioned on the floor. Ayres adopted the technique, pooling brightly coloured paint onto the surface of the canvas. During the early 1960s Ayres saw exhibitions of work by the American painters Mark Rothko and Morris Louis. Their influence made a strong impression on Ayres's work, as 'Lure' testifies.
Marianne Mulvey