Ashley Pelletier
Bio
Ashley Pelletier is a painter living and working in the Boston and Providence areas. Her work is about intuition, play, and humor. Ashley has exhibited her work at the Bristol Art Museum, the Attleboro Arts Museum, and other galleries throughout the Northeast. Ashley holds a BFA from Rhode Island College and an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She currently works at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Statement
“It’s not about facts, it’s about feelings. It’s about remembering feelings and happiness. A definition of art is that it makes concrete our most subtle emotions.” - Agnes Martin
I make colorful abstract oil paintings. The paintings vary in size from the very large (60x48 in.) to the very small (8x10in.) They contain funny and awkward shapes that interact with one another in various ways. One shape may lay atop another while another fades into the one below it. Sometimes, two shapes appear as though they’re about to meet but never touch. The shapes become characters that exist in a world and logic of their own. Like a cartoon or children’s book, each painting tells a story.
My creative process prioritizes the playful relationship between myself and the painting. I dance to music while simultaneously pulling, scraping, and sliding paint across the canvas. The physical act of making is evident in the final result, as layers of crusted paint and debris narrate the painting's history. Varying surface treatments and textures enhance the persona of each painted shape. While the paintings are about happiness and humor, they are also about the formal and conceptual issues specific to the language and history of painting.