ARTIST STATEMENT/BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:

William T. Ayton is a British artist living & working in Upstate NY. His work deals with myth, social issues and the human condition, seen through a prism colored by surrealism, symbolism (of the decadent variety) and expressionism. His work tries to shine a light into some of the darker areas of the human psyche.

William T. Ayton was born in the north of England on 11/11/1958. After showing an early aptitude for drawing and painting (which originally came about from heavy exposure to American comic books), he went to Edinburgh College of Art to get a BA (Hons) in Fine Arts. After living in Edinburgh for a while, Ayton moved to Madrid, Spain with a girlfriend, where he taught English to make a living and had his first solo exhibitions. In 1990, he met Diana, who became his wife about a year after that. Together they came up with the idea for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exhibition, which has been exhibited across the USA and Europe, and has been seen on TV in Spain & Canada. After they got married, they moved to Paris, France, where Ayton did some more English teaching & did some more art shows. Some of his paintings were featured on a cable TV program in Paris. They moved to Brooklyn, NY, and then to the Hudson Valley, where they now reside.

Ayton's work deals mainly with mythological subject matter, both classical and more contemporary. He draws deeply from his subconscious to create his images. The process is semi-automatic, as he rarely knows what the final result will be. Ayton's influences pull mainly from the surreal and proto-surreal tradition, but also, and less obviously, from the history of expressionism. He tends to work in series of drawings and paintings: in 1998 he did the "Apocalypse" series, which ended up being not really about the end of the world. Most recently, he has been working on a series of paintings based on Rilke's "Duino Elegies", and another large-scale series entitled "The Black Paintings" (with no apologies to Francisco de Goya). Ayton has recently exhibited his War Room installations in 2 locations -- New York City & Poughkeepsie, NY, and intends to tour the exhibit nationally in the USA and internationally.