Onslow Ford, Gordon

▪ 2004

      British-born American painter (b. Dec. 26, 1912, Wendover, Buckinghamshire, Eng.—d. Nov. 9, 2003, Inverness, Calif.), was associated with the Paris Surrealists but came to be interested in spontaneous creation and such metaphysical concerns as psychologist Carl Jung's idea of the collective unconscious. The grandson of a sculptor, Onslow Ford served in the Royal Navy (1927–37) but, determined to pursue his interest in painting, resigned and went to Paris, where he worked briefly with André Lhote and Fernand Léger. He also met the Chilean painter Roberto Matta, who introduced him to André Breton, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, and other Surrealists. Onslow Ford abandoned the pictorial images of his early work and embraced techniques such as psychic automatism. In 1941 he lectured on Surrealism in New York City to an audience that included Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and other young American painters who felt his influence and went on to create some of the strongest Abstract Expressionist work of the 20th century. (Indeed, years before Pollock became famous for the technique, Onslow Ford practiced what he called coulage, a method of pouring paint directly onto a canvas.) Onslow Ford lived with his wife, poet Jacqueline Johnson, in Mexico (1941–47; during which time he formally broke with the Surrealists) and then in California, where Vedanta philosophy, calligraphy, and Buddhism were among the influences he absorbed. Onslow Ford also wrote about what he called a basic visual language of line, circle, and dot; his books included Painting in the Instant (1964) and Creation (1978).

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