The Metamorphosis of Brian Asquith

It’s a gloomy Third Friday in early spring, and although crowds of people pass by, only a few have ventured through the door of Brian Asquith’s studio. Inside, a lone couple stands before an image of a giant lobster. Its neon colors seem to glow against the stark white gallery walls. Over three feet tall, the turquoise body is covered with thousands of tiny dots in a dizzying array of hues from deep cobalt blue to pumpkin orange. A ring of minutely articulated legs encircles its armored shell like a halo. Isolated on a blank background, the creature appears uncanny in its detail, making it seem as if the slightest movement will cause it to flick its ribbon-like antenna or swim off the paper entirely. Squinting at the crustacean, one visitor whispers “is that… a photograph?” From behind a cluttered table, a voice calls out “it’s a watercolor!”, causing low murmurs of disbelief to echo through the room.

At 78th Street Studios, Brian Asquith and Hector Vega’s V&A Gallery is tucked into an outside corner separated from the other artists’ studios in the busy main building. Similarly, Asquith’s creative journey is distinct from that of many artists in the complex, and the broader arts community. For one, Asquith is a self-taught artist, having only taken technical drawing classes in secondary school. He also only began pursuing art seriously in his fifties, after a storied career that included serving in the British Army/Royal Air Force, working as a materials scientist, and practicing law to fight Big Pharma. Yet it is perhaps these differences that make his work so refreshing, direct, and often well-received by people who might feel alienated by more theoretical, abstract art. It also allows him to depict the natural world, his favorite subject, with the precision of a researcher and the intensity of an attorney.

Asquith was born in the Cotswolds, a pristine rural area in southwestern England. Later, his family moved to Coventry, a city in the nation’s industrial heart that Asquith compares to an “English version of Cleveland. It’s hurting. It’s trying to rebound from the loss of industry, so it’s very similar to the Rust Belt.” In the impoverished, working-class neighborhood where Asquith grew up, art school and higher education were largely considered out of reach. “We were just trained to be cannon fodder for the factory floor,” Asquith reflects. “Thankfully, my mother and grandmother made sure I had a healthy curiosity, and I grew up surrounded by books.” His favorite books were about natural history, which he devoured ravenously. Asquith likewise found refuge in the natural world itself, spending much of his time turning over paving stones and watching the creatures wriggling underneath.

Enrolled in component design classes, he was encouraged by teachers to take studio art, but he “felt bored by the monotony of constant figure drawing.” Besides, Asquith recalls, “the ‘high arts’ of portraiture and sculpture were the domain of museums, and the only time we’d see those was during a rare school trip.” He left school at sixteen to apprentice in a research lab and earn a degree in materials science. In 1995, Asquith emigrated to the United States with two suitcases and $80 in his pocket. He eventually pursued a career as a patent agent, leveraging the fact that scientists can practice patent law without having to pass the bar. “On a whim,” Asquith chose to formally attend law school at the age of fifty. Now, he works for a small but highly regarded law firm, taking on pharmaceutical companies for their role in the opioid epidemic and for the murderous price of insulin.

Asquith’s first encounter with Cleveland’s professional art scene occurred around 2000 when he helped a local appraiser document artwork for online auction catalogs. Inspired by what he saw, he started experimenting with watercolors in the evenings. One night at Edison’s Pub in Tremont, Asquith showed an intricate painting of a barn owl to artist Gisela Towner, who encouraged him to organize an exhibition to coincide with the neighborhood’s legendary ArtWalk. He sold every piece in the show, including a botanical illustration of a bird of paradise that was later stolen from the wall—a backhanded compliment he viewed as a sign of true demand.

Despite early success, such as having a piece accepted into the Cleveland Museum of Art’s highly competitive 2005 NEO exhibition, art took a back seat to life for a while, becoming little more than a “low-key hobby” as Asquith worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and attended law school. It wasn’t until he started casually re-exhibiting artwork at TOAST, a popular restaurant in the Gordon Arts District, that he decided to give his art “some serious attention.” Since 2024, he has produced dozens of delicately rendered watercolors that capture the transient beauty of the natural world.

Asquith’s paintings feel like a magic trick. From a distance, they look like digitally enhanced photographs, almost hallucinatory with their razor-sharp detail and saturated color palette. But the magic doesn’t disappear once you pull back the curtain. Asquith’s work becomes even more astonishing when you realize it’s created with a surprisingly analog method—just a man using simple synthetic brushes and a pencil, pouring the same focused passion into his paintings as he does into his entire life.

Asquith begins each piece by sketching the subject in graphite, then applying a wash of pigments before building up areas of color with layers of tiny dots, similar to how digital images are composed of millions of pixels. Individual hairs are added with a size 0 brush and a steady hand. Typically, he does not use watercolor subtractively; instead, he uses white paint to create light areas and highlights, a technique he credits to learning through experimentation rather than formal training.

Asquith’s selection of references is also quite unusual, at least for a contemporary artist. Whenever possible, he paints directly from ethically sourced scientific specimens, like butterflies, beetles, and all manner of things that flap or scuttle. “When it is not possible to obtain a specimen, I’ll scour the internet for images, but I prefer to work as closely from nature as possible. Once, I tried to paint a boiled crayfish from a clambake. It started to decompose, and the bloody thing stank up my apartment.” It was one of the first things he ever painted, and his choice of zoological and botanical subjects has stayed largely consistent. Asquith’s meticulous painting process can take weeks or even years, often much longer than the creatures’ lifespans, giving them an almost immortal presence.

Another refreshing result of Asquith’s limited training is that he tends not to contextualize his work within specific art-historical movements. Nonetheless, his paintings closely align with both the tradition of scientific illustration and the striking, uncanny genre of hyperrealism. Watercolor was the preferred medium for early scientific studies because of its portability, quick drying time, and ability to produce a variety of visual effects, from detailed anatomical features to the impression of light passing through or reflecting off organic surfaces. Like scientific illustrators, Asquith also tends to omit backgrounds to emphasize the organism itself.

Although Asquith’s paintings appear mimetic, resembling simple copies of nature, they are actually artistic interpretations of the natural world. In this way, his images are not photorealistic, but hyper-realistic. Photorealism is an artistic genre that aims to replicate a photograph as accurately as possible, often including the mechanical flaws of a camera, such as blurring or distortion. Hyperrealism, on the other hand, uses lifelike detail to create what philosopher Jean Baudrillard describes as “the simulation of something which never really existed.” For example, Asquith’s colors are often intensified or entirely imagined, like his monarch butterflies, which seem to flutter across his gallery walls in vibrant shades of technicolor blue, yellow, and red. Sometimes, he even reverses the top and bottom patterns of a butterfly’s wings—a choice, he notes, that would “give a lepidopterist conniptions.” Although, as Asquith points out, he often finds Mother Nature’s arrangements more captivating than his own.

Whether altered or amplified, Asquith’s subjects highlight the breathtaking complexity of the natural world. His work has recently been exhibited at the Erie Art Museum, BAYarts, and the Butler Institute of American Art; however, it is the power of his artwork to inspire ecological awareness that makes him an ideal partner for the Cleveland Botanical Garden, which connects people with nature’s “wonder, beauty, and value.” This May, around twenty of Asquith’s paintings and a selection of prints will be featured in a solo exhibition in the Garden’s Orientation Theater. A joint opening reception will be held from 6 to 9 pm on Friday, May 29, coinciding with an exhibition of work by Planet Joy Studio, a collaborative art studio that encourages adults with developmental differences to explore their creativity. The event will be marked by the return of tropical butterflies to the Garden’s Costa Rica biome, a fitting tribute to someone who has transformed many times but always finds his own way to soar.

For more examples of Asquith’s work, visit britishbrian.com

Works of Brian Asquith
Works from Planet Joy Studio
Opening Reception 6 – 9 pm Friday, May 29
Cleveland Botanical Gardens
11030 East Blvd
Cleveland, OH 44106
HoldenFG.org
216.721.1600