Erasure • Features • Private Ear

Ashley Potter trained at St Martin's (London Art College - "the last 6 months were good"), finishing in 1982. Since then he has been painting and working as an illustrator, art director and has been teaching around the country.

Daniel Miller (Mute Records) wanted portraits of Erasure for their new releases and saw Ashley's work in illustration annuals and then his folder from his Agent & liked it.

Apparently, Daniel had also been looking at an Edward Hopper documentary about the influence of Hopper's work on films. Coincidentally, Hopper is one of Ashley's influences, along with film noir & German expressionism.

When Ashley was working on the artwork for the single, he hadn't heard the record, as, at the time, the single hadn't been chosen or finished yet, so it was wonderful & strange synchronicity, the way in which the painting matches the mood of the song so well.

The artwork for "Stay With Me" and Erasure represents the isolation of living in a city full of many other people, "the atmosphere with an edge"; late nights, full of possibility, chance meetings, etc, as well as loneliness & the fear of being alone. This could easily be a description of the video for "Stay With Me", don't you think?

Emma from Mute Film had to find a director who could produce a similar effect to the artwork. Mario Cavalli had directed a series of animated adverts for the Post Office and when Emma showed Ashley Mario's showreel, saying, 'Look! This guy's work is really similar to yours,' Ashley replied, "That's because I'm his art director!"

Besides these commercials, Ashley had worked on an experimental film about five years ago for Channel 4, called "Secret Passions", which was set in Soho Square, "people watching". It also involved painting people and changing colours by computer. On this video, Ashley designed the sets and costumes, working with the Production Designer, and helped to paint the set.

Ashley is already working on the artwork for the next single and it will tie in with the album and single designs. This time he has taped "Fingers & Thumbs (Cold Summer's Day) and is torturing his neighbours by playing it continually while he works, to get in the mood. He is doing a linocut in seven colours. He said that as it's a lot smaller in scale (the oil paintings for the album and single were between 2'x 1.5' and 4' x 3' done on stretch canvas), it's harder to capture features and so it will be more impressionistic. Again, it's a city setting, but this time with Vince & Andy outdoors.

Amazingly, Ashley has not actually met Vince yet. He took photographs of Andy and met him at the video shoot, but for Vince he has had to work from publicity photos and by borrowing the wax heads from "Chorus". This, of course, is nothing like painting from a sitting in real life, and without this, as Ashley said, you get no idea of how someone stands, how they hold themselves or how they would walk.

I asked Ashley whether he likes Erasure. He said he liked their singles but had never heard an album. When he was sent the "Pop!" video and album, he was surprised to see just how many hits they've had and said he now finds himself singing songs from the new album.