I am not one for pretty pictures.‘ Perhaps when I am long gone this will be a quote that I am remembered for alongside my paintings. For you will mostly find me in the gallery on a sunny day and out on the moors when it is at its most inhospitable, for these are the days that captivate me. All your senses are alive, so that what you visibly see is not the whole painting , the rest comes from you. Ashley Jackson’s Watercolour sketches is a collection of these raw drawings combined with my intimate thoughts and feelings, together they may become a finished painting. I suppose you could say that I use my sketchbook in the same way that others create a diary of words, they are a reflection of my relationship with the Yorkshire landscape. In all honesty, they were never intended for anything other than my personal recollections. I can go back to the drawing months later and mentally open that moment as if I was stood in that same location, I could tell you the weather, the sounds and smells , whilst the colours are as vivid as if I had gone back in time and revisited the day itself. This book allows you to step back from my dramatic and atmospheric watercolour paintings and see the landscape in its nakedness, through my private, personal sketches you can join me in my artistic journey and conversation with nature. AUTHOR: Ashley Jackson, Yorkshire’s favourite artist, has been capturing his artistic passion for God’s County in his paintings and sketchbooks for over fifty years. Since opening his first gallery back in 1963, he has become one of the country’s leading and most successful landscape watercolourists. His unique evocative and distinctive paintings of brooding moorlands have become synonymous with Yorkshire, and more particular the moors above and around his Gallery situated in the heart of the Pennines, Holmfirth. 50 colour illustrations
