Greetings friends! Another day has dawned and the week is officially starting for me today. It is quite nice to be back on schedule, since I was off last week while my family is here helping me to catch up on some at-home projects. During this time off I realized that I really love paint. Paintings, original art, decorative paint on walls and ceilings, painted furniture, etc. Its something I've wrestled with for years with a sort of love-hate relationship but when I see painterly works like these my heart melts again. So meet Ashley Stevener, a local Nashvillian whom I met recently through a mutual friend. Ashley is a teacher by day and painter by night, weekends and summers when she creates these rich, layered mixed media works on paper. Casey O' Connell emailed me last week to share her portfolio and nothing pleases me more than to have been introduced to her beautiful, color-saturated work. Her palette of punchy warm coral tones mixed with subtle greens and grays reminds me of the Florida coastline and I have to imagine she is influenced by her St. Augustine surroundings. This palette paired with imagery of young girls trapped between the two worlds of adult and child creates a dream like playful innocence marked by the subtle edge of reality.
images: top 3- ashley stevener bottom 3- casey o'connell
oh my!! so much color and warmth! I really love these!
Posted by: Nuit | June 02, 2010 at 10:00 AM
Woah!
So I somehow stumbled across your beautiful blog, and was just browsing...only to find out that you live in Nashville and Ashley is a very dear friend of mine!!! Crazy!
Are you familiar with the first Saturday art crawl downtown? My husband and I are in the process of adopting a little girl from Ethiopia, and are going to be throwing pre-art crawl parties in our downtown loft to raise money. There is a suggested donation of $10, and we'll be serving wine, cheese and cupcakes. We'll be featuring work by a local artist each month, and this Saturday it's Ashley! Just thought I'd extend the invitation...everyone is invited!
LOVE your blog. Gorgeous.
Posted by: rebekka | June 27, 2010 at 04:59 PM