Onslow Ford obit (NDC)
band beyond description
(ATTN: National editors)
//Mystical Painter Gordon Onslow Ford, 90, Dies//
By Suzanne Muchnic
(c) 2003, Los Angeles Times
Gordon Onslow Ford, a visionary painter who searched for truth in the
invisible,
has died. He was 90.
Onslow Ford died Nov. 8 of complications from a stroke at his longtime
home in
the Northern California community of Inverness.
A dapper, diminutive artist of great charm and quiet confidence, Onslow
Ford
found his first muse in Surrealism but his mature work took a mystical
approach
that embraced Zen Buddhism and self-discovery. His signature paintings,
mainly
composed of circles, dots and lines, depict magical galaxies or landscapes
of the
mind. More than mere abstractions of the visible world, he conceived of them
as
revelations of ``inner worlds.''
The images in his art were ``more real than what I can see,'' he said in
a Los
Angeles Times interview in 1993, when his work was exhibited at the
Frederick R.
Weisman Museum at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. Unlike the
Surrealists,
who were inspired by dreams and irrational aspects of the unconscious, he
was
captivated by what he called ``realities behind dreams.'' To paint a dream
was to
paint a memory, he said. By then, he preferred to look to the future,
working
spontaneously and conjuring ``images we haven't seen before.''
Onslow Ford was born in Wendover, England, on Dec. 26, 1912, into an
artistic
family. His grandfather was sculptor Edward Onslow Ford; his aunt, painter
Enid
Widdrington. He began drawing as a child but had a military education, at
the Royal
Naval College at Dartmouth. He served as a British naval officer for several
years
and resigned in 1937 to pursue art.
The aspiring artist moved to Paris in 1937 and briefly studied with
Modernist
painter Fernand Leger, but he had little interest in painting the precisely
orchestrated arrangements suggested by Leger. Onslow Ford was more in tune
with
Chilean Surrealist painter Roberto Matta, who became his friend and
introduced him
to other Surrealist artists, including Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy. Onslow
Ford
officially joined the group in 1938 and worked with them until 1944.
The artists scattered during World War II. Onslow Ford left Paris before
the
Nazi invasion and briefly returned to England. At the invitation of a
European
expatriate group in America, he went to New York in 1941 and lectured on
Surrealism
at the New School. While in New York, he met and married American writer
Jacqueline
Johnson.
Soon after their marriage, they went to Mexico to visit a friend,
Surrealist
painter Wolfgang Paalen, and stayed six years. The Onslow Fords moved to the
United
States in 1947 and settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gordon Onslow Ford
was
naturalized in 1952.
During his California years, Onslow Ford was best known as a member of a
three-artist group called Dynaton - named for the Greek word for possible.
With
Paalen and painter Lee Mullican, he began to seek a new direction in art.
``Dynaton,'' a 1951 exhibition of the three artists' work, launched what
Onslow
Ford called ``a quest of the inner worlds.''
He followed the quest in relative isolation. In 1957, he and his wife
bought 400
acres of woodlands in Inverness, where he built his studio and home. Shortly
thereafter, they donated most of the land to the Nature Conservancy to
ensure its
preservation. She died in 1978.
Onslow Ford's work has been featured in exhibitions through Europe and
the
United States. His paintings are in the permanent collections of many
museums,
including the M.H. de Young Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in San
Francisco,
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in
New
York, the Tate Gallery in London and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
He is survived by his sister, Elizabeth Onslow Ford Rouslin, and nephew,
Max
Rouslin, who live in North Carolina.
AP-NY-11-17-03 0010EST
--
Peace,
Steve
--
"Thinking a lot about less and less, and forgetting the love we bring..."
"Freak freely"
Junter 52
to do a google search on his work and check it out. R.I.P. Onslow
Peaces Gary