“I see them as my superpowers”

Jonathan Ash is an artist based at Nucleus Arts, known for his distinctive use of colour and occasionally dressing up as Scooby Doo. Steven met him ahead of his current exhibition, Gargoyles of Medway, to discuss how colour-blindness shaped his art, why he sees it as a superpower, and how he somehow became Head of IT at a school in Poland.

Are you known by any other names? 
I am, yes.

How did you come to be known as Jonathan Ash? 
I needed an artist name. It just sounded better. I think you need something with more than one syllable in your first name. It's almost like a rhythm, isn't it? 

At what age did you make that decision?
It came about because I was starting the business. That would be in 2018.

What is your official occupation? 
I don't know, suppose I'm an artist. It took me a while, because obviously I spend quite a lot of time doing other things as well.

My head was full of wire wool, all twisted together, and I couldn't really focus on anything

What has being an artist entailed?
Questions like this I really struggle with.
Drink coffee and network. No, that's not true.
Art for me comes from a place of… It was a bit of a therapy for me. I had a rather large breakdown basically, and I just needed something that was to focus me because my brain was absolutely full. 
Almost like the Black Dog scenario.
My head was full of wire wool, all twisted together, and I couldn't really focus on anything. I ended up doing an NVQ in Art ten years ago. It made me realise that actually I could focus on art for hours and hours every day.
I suddenly realised that, you know... Oh, no, sorry, I didn't realise. The person that ran the course realised that I had a bit of a way of capturing people's expressions when I was only using pencil at the time. She encouraged me to focus on portraits, it went from there. I was doing a few pictures for friends and family. 

Do you have any other roles?
Weirdly enough, they've all come out of me being an artist. All of these opportunities have come out of people knowing me for my art. One of the things is that I do a lot of handyman work. I'm a qualified carpenter as well.
That started off when I was at Nucleus Arts. I started doing odd jobs for Nucleus Arts. One of the best jobs I had was when Nucleus Arts bought the conservancy in Rochester. They needed someone to do the internal demolition. I was there with Mr Sledghammer, and there's a great picture of me in the boardroom upstairs, and I've got all of my PPE on. That was great fun. The other good thing about that was I got to research the Conservancy's history as well, because it was a Grade II listed building. We needed to know what we could and couldn't do in there. We needed pictures of the original plans and everything. I went to the archives in Strood and I got the original George Bond plans, actually water-coloured hand-done by Bond and it was wonderful, a really good experience.
Anyway, that led to them realising they could save quite a lot of money. Rather than getting contractors in every time they needed to change a tap, they could get me to do it.
That's led on to a lot of private jobs as well. Somehow I've got into gardening as well. One of the funny things about being an artist was that it's how I met the person that runs Rainbows Over Medway, and she was looking for somebody to do the Christmas card for, at that time, Medway Pride Radio. I said, “Yeah, I'll do that.” She said, “Well, how much do you want for that?” Very flippantly, I said, “Just give me a radio show.” So, she did. While I'm a little less frequent with that, it's been good. I've been doing that for five years. 

You can also occasionally be seen dressed up as Scooby Doo? 
Yes, that was at Medway Pride. I was helping with the Medway Pride Radio stall, and it seemed a bit boring just to go dressed normally, so yes I ended up in Scooby Doo outfit. We had been threatened that the Christian Alliance were going to come and protest outside Medway Pride. I basically did an A1 sign that said Scooby Dooby Doo on it. If they were protesting, I was going to nip round the back, and as they were taking a photo, I was going to put my sign up. That's how it started. Most of these things come from very silly places.

What are the Gargoyles of Medway? 
The Gargoyles of Medway is an exhibition that's going to be on Analogue Music in Rochester, an absolutely brilliant record shop run by two wonderful people. I have recently been working with Stuart Turner, and he's released a new album called Gargoyles at the Memoir Club. This album they've been working on for, goodness me, at least five years I think it is, and Stuart's always said to me that he would really like me to do cover art for one of his albums and it just sort of all came together at the same time. I painted the front cover and it's basically a club in Soho from around the 1920s. I've got four women on the front, all dressed in the 1920s party outfits. 
I found a picture of the wallpaper from the inside of the club in Soho, and turned that into a patterned wallpaper. That's the background as well. 
I'm going to be showing two original paintings, the ones that are the front cover of the album and then, kindly Alistair and Hannah at Analogue said I could pop up some more paintings. Over the last eight years I've done a lot of paintings of people to do with music in Medway, poets as well, there's going to be depending on space about 30 prints going up.

Is there going to be someone involved in that scene who's going to turn up and go, 'Why am I up there?'
Yes. I've said many times, in fact Stuart was in that position about three years ago. I'd painted every other member of one of his bands, and he went, “Well, where am I?” His 50th birthday came, and I went, “Okay, that's your 50th birthday present. I'm painting you.” 
There's some of the bands that I used to know in the 80s, because my brother used to be in a band around the same time, the Prisoners and Milkshakes and the Dentists. He was in the band called The Pressure. They used to play the MIC club and places like that. I only went to the MIC once. I think I was 13, and he needed help getting his drum kit up the stairs, and then he got kicked out. Then my sister was very good friends with the Prisoners, and she went out with one of the Milkshakes as well. She used to be a roadie for the Dentists, and at the time Del Amitri, because obviously Del Amitri were supporting the Dentists back in the 80s. I was the little shit brother. I was a little annoying kid. A couple of the members of The Prisoners used to come around to the house and I'd stick cardboard boxes on their heads.
Honestly, I was such an irritating shit. I actually apologised to Allan Crockford a few years ago. 

When's the exhibition on? 
The exhibition is from Friday the 14th of August, and it's going to be until Sunday the 13th of September. Absolutely free and you fancy having a little rummage through the records while you're there, there's some brilliant stuff, so it's all fine. 

Will any of the exhibits be available for purchase? 
Yes, they are. There'll be the prints. There's larger prints, smaller prints. The two originals for the album cover, I've given those to Stuart. Hopefully there'll be some prints and cards if I can get my backside in this gear and get them done. It's the usual Jonathan Ash fodder I suppose.