Gillian Ayres
Gillian Ayres
Green Grow the Rushes, O!, 1990
Oil on canvas
138.1 x 414 x 4.1 cm
54 3/8 x 163 x 1 5/8 in.
(1930-2018) Gillian Ayres is celebrated for her abstract painting and printmaking, which she claims have 'no composition' but incorporate broad brushstrokes and vibrant colours. Ayres is also known for her use of titles to reference the mood of a completed painting. She used titles as a linguistic tool to connect her work to various themes, including history and music.
Playful in its abstraction, Green Grow the Rushes, O! epitomises Gillian Ayres’ ground-breaking career as a painter. The work’s title references the traditional folksong of the same name and speaks to the culture of communal singing and celebration of nature. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t be filling yourself up, making yourself happy, enjoying yourself”, she proclaimed in 1995. Ayres was insistent that her work aimed to make the viewer happy – a positive force of colour and vitality that is influenced by the landscape and environment in which she lived.
Ayres was awarded an OBE in 1986 and elected as a Royal Academician in 1991. She had a successful teaching career, being the first woman to head the art department at the Winchester School of Art. She was made an Honorary Doctor of English Literature by London University (1994), a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London (1996) and received a Sargent Fellowship from The British School At Rome in 1997. London’s University of the Arts made her an Honorary Fellow in 2005. Gillian Ayres lived and worked in Cornwall and London until her death in 2018, aged 88.
Gillian Ayres first exhibited in Young Contemporaries in 1949, and with the London Group in 1951. Her first solo exhibition was at Gallery One, London in 1956. In 1983 a retrospective of her work was held at the Serpentine Gallery, London, touring to Barnsley, Penzance, Nottingham and Llandudno. She has had solo shows at the Tate Gallery (1995) and the Royal Academy (1997). Her most recent solo exhibition, Song of Hours Fled, was held at the Hong Kong Central Space in January 2025.
Major solo exhibitions of Ayres' work have taken place at CAFA Art Museum, Beijing (2017); National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (2017); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2010); Southampton City Art Gallery (2005); Royal Academy of Arts, London (1997); Manchester City Art Gallery (1993); Serpentine Gallery, London (1983); Museum of Modern Art Oxford (1981) and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (1978).
Ayres' paintings and prints are held by major museums and galleries around the world including Tate, London; British Museum, London; Arts Council, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Ulster Museum, Belfast; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Museum of Modern Art, Brasilia.
