Gaz Anson

I work in colour the way some work in clay—shaping it, layering it, tearing it back to let something ‘other’ breathe through. Each painting is a kind of excavation and reworking of a landscape, internal or external.

My abstract works are born from a deep, lifelong engagement with colour, surface, and the poetic principles of haikai—the evocative Japanese aesthetic that gave rise to haiku. That influence, along with time spent living in Japan, informs the visual sensibility of my work: ambiguous, calligraphic, and open to multiple interpretations.

I invite the viewer to become part of the composition. Orientation is optional. Meaning is fluid. A work hung upside down may speak more truthfully than one hung ‘correctly’.

Raised by my mother, Patricia Howell—herself an expressive and prolific painter—I grew up immersed in colour and visual conversation. That creative intensity continues to pulse through my

work, where the seen and the unseen intersect.