ARTIST Ashley Jackson is to receive the lifetime achievement award at the Examiner community awards.
The ever-popular Holmfirth artist is world-renowed for his paintings of lonely and windswept moors above Huddersfield, massively boosting the area’s profile.
But he has also raised huge amounts for charities – especially the Prince’s Trust – which he has been involved in for 30 years. The Trust helps people to set themselves up in business.
In recent years Ashley has also been helping Northern Rail to steer youngsters away from graffiti and trespassing on the railways.
The Examiner can today reveal the extent of the good work Ashley now does with 60% of his time and paintings going to help a vast rate of charities, with just 40% for his own business.
His gallery in the centre of Holmfirth receives around 40 letters from people each week asking for help with charities and good causes.
Ashley prides himself on two main things – being a Yorkshire artist and being an artist of the people, producing work that everyone can enjoy.
His originals are now increasing in value at the rate of 8% a year and many people are buying them as investments. Originals painted by Ashley in the early 60s which sold then for the equivalent of 75p now change hands for up to £4,000.
Few will be able to afford his huge originals – they sell for £30,000 and two that size hang in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot – but many can afford the framed prints at £15.99.
Ashley said: “I’m a working class kid and always have been and I want to take art to the people.’’
Speaking frankly in the run-up to the awards night on October 8 at the Galpharm Stadium, Ashley revealed for the first time how he risked all many times to get where he is today.
He and wife, Anne, lived in a one-up, one-down house in Dodworth, Barnsley, after they married on December 22, 1962. It had an outside toilet.
At the time Ashley worked as an apprentice to signwriter and commercial artist Ron Darwent in Barnsley.
Ashley said: “Ron taught me about life and as an experienced mountaineer and climber how to love and appreciate the temperament of the moors.’’
The couple were so poor Ashley was driven to his wedding in the works van and afterwards the newly-weds caught a bus from Barnsley bus station to Blackpool where they stayed two nights at the Gables Hotel.
They couldn’t afford to stay any longer.
In 1968 they spotted a bungalow at Silkstone Common in Barnsley, but as an artist Ashley struggled to get a mortgage.
But he had always been with the Yorkshire Bank – then known as the Yorkshire Penny Bank – and they managed to tailor-make a mortgage for him to cover the home’s £2,300 price tag.
A short time later Ashley was invited to exhibit at the Upper Grosvenor Gallery in London’s West End.
To do so, he’d have to stump up £3,000 – far more than the cost of his house – so Ashley went back to the bank and persuaded them to lend him the money against the house.
“It was a big gamble,’’ he said. “We would have lost the lot if we hadn’t sold enough paintings to make it work.’’
He went on to borrow money against that house a further seven times before moving to his current home in Holmfirth 34 years ago.
And that was risked eight times as Ashley built up his business and reputation – even LS Lowry travelled to Barnsley to buy a painting from Ashley in the late 1960s and gave him tips on how to survive in the art world.
Over the years Ashley has travelled worldwide painting – but has never been anywhere that inspires him like the moors around here.
“I only paint scenes which make the hairs on the back of my hand stand up and no matter how impressive the scenery is anywhere else in the world that only happens on the moors around here,’’ he said.
“I’ve been doing this for 50 years now and it still has the same effect on me.’’
He always vowed that his first child would be called Heather or, if it was a boy, Bracken, after the moors.
His scenes are on highbrow books such as The Bronte Sisters Complete Novels Illustrated – yet he even gets a mention in a Mills and Boon romance called When The Devil Drives when one character says to another: “I like some of your pictures. Isn’t that by Ashley Jackson?’’
Ashley has already been granted the Freedom Of London, but is thrilled to be honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Examiner community awards.
He said: “What I love about Huddersfield is the fact that people tell you straight what they think. If they don’t like my work, they tell me. And without the support of these people over the years who have bought my work, I would not be existing today.
“When people go to art galleries they often feel intimidated. When they come to my gallery people here will talk to them.
“I could have left Huddersfield to earn more money, but all I want to do is paint the moors. I don’t want to be away from them.’’
And he is renowned for not being part of the art establishment, openly showing his dislike of Turner Prize style art.
“A pile of dung is a pile of dung in my book,’’ he said. “I see art like that as a statement by the people who have done it as putting two fingers up at society which has given them the money through grants.
“I’ll never get on in the art world because I speak my mind.’’
Ashley paints from September to March when the moorland weather is at its most dramatic and the rest of the year he spends time exhibiting, doing lectures and writing books.
“It’s unforgiving up there on the moors,’’ he said. “It can turn wild in minutes and when you are on the moors in thunder and lightning you feel there is a controlling force in the world.’’
Ashley met wife, Anne, through painting – when he was painting the gates at Barnsley Art College. He had been in trouble after a class painting a nude model when the art teacher and college principal felt Ashley’s result had gone into far too much detail.
As punishment he was ordered to paint the gates – and Anne got chatting to him while on her way to school nearby.
The couple have two daughters, Heather, 38, and Claudia, 37, and four grandchildren, 12-year-old Francesca, 10-year-old Oliver, 11-year-old Megan and nine-year-old Sam.
Ashley also let on he used his middle name, Norman, while growing up in Barnsley.
“If I used Ashley, I’d have got hammered,’’ he said.
He has always followed the words of a woman who owned an art shop in Barnsley. She told him when he was a young boy: “You paint what you want to paint and educate the people to like what you’ve done.’’
Ashley’s love for Yorkshire is reflected in the fact that he’s vice president and vice chairman of The Yorkshire Society and an ambassador for the county.
Or as Ashley puts it: “I can’t play cricket for Yorkshire, but I can bat for it in the world of art.’’
He has massively boosted the moors around here – especially in America where he has done workshops to crowds of up to 3,500 in massive auditoriums and a TV series called Ashley Jackson’s World Of Art following on from his ITV series A Brush With Ashley.
Ashley’s programme remains on America’s Public Broadcasting Channel and in recent years he’s been recognised by American tourists in countries as diverse as China, India and Barbados.
Ashley was born on October 22, 1940, in Penang, Malaya.
His father, Norman Valentine, was general manager of the Tiger Beer Company in Singapore but also worked for British Intelligence.
As the Japanese Army swept towards Singapore in 1942 he put his wife, Dulcie, and Ashley on a ship bound for India. It set sail with Japanese bombs falling all around it.
Norman became a prisoner at the notorious Changai Prison and after trying to escape was sent to Borneo.
Four years later he was given a shovel, made to dig his own grave and then shot.
“At five I lost the father I had never got to know,’’ said Ashley. “Nineteen men died alongside him and I know where the graves are. I aim to visit them for the first time and lay a bunch of flowers on each one.’’
He is president of the Yorkshire Association of Allied Forces In The Far East.
After Ashley’s mother remarried, the family moved back to England and came to stay with relatives in Huddersfield where he caught his first glimpse of the moors.
He acknowledges they are his mistress, but the over-riding passion in his life will always be his wife, Anne.
“It was Anne who knew how much I desired to give my life to painting,’’ he said. “She had total and absolute faith in me.
“When critics doubted, she encouraged. I shall be eternally grateful.’’
