Bigger is not better and ‘The Sublime’ is so much more than an unforgiving bombardment of colour. C

There is an initial impact with the work of Gillian Ayres as it sits in all its vastness on the walls of Cardiff Art Museum. One enters the gallery with such anticipation of the journey to be travelled looking into the energy of paint, dripped splashed and smeared onto the canvas.

There is no doubt that one is overwhelmed with colour, but as a practicing Abstract artist, I feel well equipped to take on the challenge. So I stare at the wall of multicolour and I stare and I feel nothing. I stand back a few feet and re-focus my gaze. Still nothing. The paintings in the first/last gallery were produced in the 80’s and are reportedly the most critically acclaimed. I am now searching the catalogue guidance about accessing or at least appreciating the work. I cannot find a clue or a key to unlock what stands before me.

Then, I begin to analyse the work in a more technical way and discover the limited contrast in the use of colour and the application of paint. I cannot deny there is multicolour, but it is all applied in the same thick impasto manner and often it takes on the crude muddiness of an overused mixing palette. I begin to understand that I may never enter the world of Ayres sublime. The canvases and boards remain impenetrable walls, leaving me unmoved and terribly disappointed as they initially promised so much. In theory, a room full of some of the largest abstracts ever should impact in a similar manner to say the Tate Modern’s room of Gerard Richter, but in truth they make no connection at all.

The upstairs galleries contain her earlier work. There is so much more for me to appreciate in her stained canvases of poured enamel and turpentine from the 50’s and 60’s. Here she leaves vast areas of blank canvas. The shapes in paintings such as ‘The Brood’ begin to breathe, the colour resonates deep into the work and out towards the viewer, as it often does when faced with certain works by Rothko. At least in these galleries I begin to understand the true power of her work and acknowledge her greatness in that she was at the forefront of getting a hesitant British Art establishment to accept the importance of Abstract Art.

When leaving Ayres exhibition at Cardiff, one can travel a maze of wonderful Art from many years. I was particularly struck by a sculpture by Barbra Hepworth in the Doig to Bacon exhibition which, in its carved, curved, caressing sensualness, conveying a quiet power , a power that really can connect one to notions of the sublime far more successfully than Ayres’ Paintings. Hepworth’s sculpture displays none of the efforts of production and made me realise that it is not always necessary to be so obvious with the viewer about the struggle one encounters to convey true and important meaning.