Ashley Garrett
Artist Statement:
My paintings exist in various states of arousal—soft to agitated, dense to linear, atmospheric to spatial. I begin my work by experiencing nature directly: walking or sitting by creeks and ponds near my studio in upstate New York. Entering a meditative, receptive state, I invite impressions of light, time, and weather to move through me. These sensations, along with memories and dreams, inform an intuitive process of painting that begins in my studio as full-body movement—working on the floor, circling the canvas, pulling space into form.
The resulting paintings are not depictions of landscape, they are spaces of consciousness—emotional, psychic, and elemental. Form rises and dissolves, color vibrates with sensation, and time expands in layered marks. I use oil paint and oil sticks in wet-in-wet, fluid applications, building open and dense, tactile surfaces that invite visual immersion and intimate attention.
My work draws on a lineage of painters like Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell, where perception becomes structure and gesture becomes presence. I also respond to myth—particularly female figures in Greek mythology who transform into natural forms. These archetypes inform the energetic shifts in my paintings, spaces for rupture, release, and return. I see the transformative experiences of the female characters in myth like Daphne, Eurydice, and Psyche, as potential for new kinds of protection and power, especially in today's revived patriarchal environment. They express their agency through methods of changing states—dissolving into space, air, trees, having their senses changed and removed, and this interests me deeply as a method of investigation through painting.
