Debbie Ayles
Debbie Ayles is a Colchester-based artist and a member of Colchester Art Society. Working in water-based paint — acrylic and watercolour — she explores the built environment, developing photographs and drawings into ongoing series of metamorphic architecture and landscape collages. Her work has been selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2023), the Royal Watercolour Society Open at Bankside Gallery (2022), the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 206th Exhibition at the Mall Galleries (2018) and the Society of Women Artists at the Mall Galleries (2024, 2026). Solo exhibitions include 'Blue Horizons – A Journey Through Time' and 'Structures Revealed' at The Minories, Colchester, 'Architectural Reflections' at Westminster Reference Library and 'Dynamic City: Reflections in Canary Wharf' at Crossrail Place Roof Gardens (2018). She won the Daily Telegraph/Novartis Art Meets Science Prize with 'Jesmond Barn' (2005). In 2025, her artwork 'Every Window Tells a Story' was acquired by the Canary Wharf Outdoor Public Art Collection.
Artist Statement
I explore the multifaceted identity of architecture by looking at the impact of buildings on their surroundings and how they reflect and absorb them, creating a new perception designed to awaken the imagination of the viewer. I work in water-based paint, liking the transparency and opaqueness that can be achieved in the washes I lay down. A creative tension is generated by initially allowing the materials to work together on the paper, almost at will. Shape-seeking and the apparent lack of three-dimensionality is influenced by memories of migraine aura I used to experience. Researching the built environment, I record it initially through photography and then drawings. Architecture provides ample opportunity to find an unpredictable interplay of the organic and the geometric. Adding figures and transport to some work gives a different feel to landscapes. My research images, drawings and photos are developing into an ongoing series of metamorphic architecture, collages and landscapes.