Bio
Ashley is an artist, teacher, and nurse living and working in the small town of Bremerton, Washington. Ashley began her long wilderness wanderings in 2016 on the Pacific Crest Trail, walking the length of the country from the Canadian border to the Mexican border over the course of four months. While walking through the state of Washington she discovered a deep yearning for its lush greens far different from the more subtle browns and yellows of her southern California childhood. It was during this part of her hike that she decided to move to the state and it is where she has lived ever since.
Ashley makes paintings, drawings, and collages as reenactments of bodily experiences within the forest, often depicting figures immersed or blurred, dissolving into and out of a plant, mushroom, or tree. Her work grapples with her personal experiences of grief and generational trauma while also the larger griefs and traumas of our time such as wildfires and the modern disconnect from the natural world. She explores these themes through the use of color that captures the link between the painful and joyous moments of living.
She received her undergraduate degree in nursing from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, CA, and continues to work as a registered nurse parallel to her work as an artist. She completed three years with the Kimberly Trowbridge painting Atelier through Gage Academy of Art and recently completed her Master’s in Fine Arts degree through the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Ashley teaches oil painting, drawing, and collage at the Modern Color Atelier through Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, WA