Keith Ashcroft

I’m interested in the stubbornness of paintings and their difficult, unreliable nature as flat, illusory surfaces, and how this fundamental contradiction is negotiated through the complex exchanges between image and material. The process of making is often initiated by staining the canvas surface, which encourages amorphous shapes and forms to emerge and materialise. The paintings are subsequently built up and improvised through excessive layering and reconfiguration, using a range of source material to challenge and change the direction of travel, including site specific material, analogue slides and photographs, google image searches, preparatory drawings, 3D models and sets.

Biography
Keith Ashcroft was Born 1977 in St Helens, UK. He currently lives and works in Salford as a painter and Lecturer in Fine Art at The Open College of the Arts / The Open University. Keith is also the founding member of OA Studios and Co-Director of Oceans Apart Gallery in Salford, Greater Manchester. 

He graduated from Manchester School of Art in 2000 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. Recent exhibitions include: Creative Roots, World of Glass, St Helens (2023) – Walking in Two Worlds, Elysium Gallery, Swansea (2022) – Cut from Cloth (Solo Exhibition) Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield (2022) – Beep Painting Prize, Elysium Gallery, Swansea (2022) – Enough is Definitely Enough, Oceans Apart, Salford (2020) – ALPS, Brunswick Gallery, Leeds (2020) – Contemporary British Painting Prize Exhibition, Menier Gallery, London (2019) – Two Fold, Oceans Apart, Salford (2019) – Contemporary British Painting Prize Exhibition, Huddersfield Art Gallery (2018) – The New English Art Club, Mall Galleries