Text, portraiture and abstract lines play major roles in the paintings of Tim Ayres (born 1965 in Hastings, UK). Quoted snippets of pop songs, novels or conversations the artist has had, as well as recognisable illustrations of faces or figures evoke a range of connotations for the viewer.
Ayres’ paintings hint at a world filled with advertisements and soundbite slogans, but the reader of his texts is provoked to careful thought: the sentences and snippets he has lifted are by no means unambiguous. The artist is equally able to reinforce or to twist the content of his texts by manipulating a letter here, unexpectedly truncating a sentence there, or shuffling the words about. The colouring and placement of his letters lends the images a rhythmic quality.
Tim Ayres uses bright shades of industrial varnish to fix his images and texts on MDF plates, using adhesive foil templates for positioning. The final varnishing gives some of his works a luminance capable of reflecting the surroundings within the picture; in other cases, he uses a silk gloss to draw the surroundings in.
