Big Curl, oil on canvas

Ashleigh Bartlett, our featured artist of the day, currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, where she creates her fabric-like and painted artworks. Smooth, layered forms dominate her paintings, which echo her canvas paper works yet are somehow more voluminous. Usually working with a mixture of acrylic and oil paint, Ashleigh paints images that are glossy and vibrant.

Pink Wig, acrylic on canvas paper

I like the way that Ashleigh uses layers in all of her work – in her fabric pieces she combines different samples, or simply folds many pieces of fabric or canvas paper over on themselves, allowing for a bit of mystery even in forms that appear simplistic at first. This is particularly true of her paintings, because they are static and two dimensional, a viewer can’t simply walk around the piece to view it from a different angle – thus they require a more prolonged view, and some speculation as to what the bright, large, central shape might be hiding.

Empty Mask, oil and acrylic on panel