Altars & Artists: Ashley Stanley
Interview 10: on capturing mundane moments, blue-tinted plexiglass, and learning the art of detachment
Welcome to Altars & Artists, a monthly interview series divining the poetry of artists' spaces. Inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s book "The Poetics of Space" and Virginia Woolf’s extended essay "A Room of One’s Own", Altars & Artists delves into the creative spaces of contemporary artists to reveal the intimate worlds they operate within. ❧
New to this series? Be sure to check out the intro post below:
Please welcome our April Altars & Artists guest: Ashley Stanley
Ashley Stanley is a mixed media artist living and working in Upstate New York. A self-taught artist, she began painting with intent in 2017. Primarily working in acrylic, oil and collage, her work draws inspiration from human gesture, everyday objects and quiet moments, blending texture and emotion to create lingering feelings of nostalgia and introspection.
View her latest work here
Works in progress can be found on her Patreon (below!)
Questions & Curiosities
Welcome to Ruminations, Ashley! It’s so nice to have you here. Would you like to begin by telling us a little about yourself and your art?
AS: Hi there! Thank you SO much for having me, I’m excited to be here! I am a mixed media artist, and I love working in acrylic, oil and collage.
I am and always have been an extremely sensitive person (sometimes to my detriment), and over the years, I’ve found that my work is always sort of super-charged by whatever emotions I’m experiencing at that time. So, because of that, my body of work is always shifting, whether that’s a shift in medium, a shift in subject, or even in colour palette.
Growing up with an extremely present artistic figure in my life instilled in me a love of all things creative from a very young age. Now that I’m older, I find a lot of focus and joy in translating the current events of my life through different bodies of work!
I remember I first stumbled across your work on threads—it was your ‘Olive Study’ painting that originally caught my eye. I’ve always enjoyed still life, but I love the series of still life paintings you shared throughout 2024 for how bright they are. Everything almost seems sun-kissed. What inspired that vivid colour palette?
AS: Ahhh yes yes! This series was so far out of my comfort zone, really. For some context, the majority of my work up until this 2024 actually focused on figurative expression; exploring the human body and the different ways we’re able to contort our forms to tell a story, or convey emotion.
But throughout the winter of 2024, I found myself in a bit of a creative lull. Not uncommon for me, however, there was something different about it that time. I felt like I needed a big shift, and found myself suddenly taking an interest in the inanimate. The way light would hit a coffee mug, or the intricate shadows and shapes that different objects would cast. All I could think about was wanting to recreate them in the form of paintings, but I also wanted to focus on exploring a much more vibrant colour palette than I was used to working with in my figurative studies.
So I spent the spring researching and studying still life, colour, and composition, and from there, my more recent body of still life work was born!
I think the vivid colour palette came from my desire to depict the mundane in a less mundane way, if that makes sense. So, to break it down further, I grew up as a Tumblr kid, imagery and collecting aesthetically pleasing photos have always been something I enjoy. I found myself thinking, ‘Yes, you’ve taken this very aesthetically pleasing photo, and it looks great as a photo, but would it be interesting as a painting? What would make it more interesting? What would separate it from its photo counterpart? What am I trying to express by painting this? What do I feel when I look at this photo that maybe isn’t tangible in the photo itself? Let’s try to bring that feeling out.’
So I decided this wasn’t a time to create good work. It was just a time to experiment, no pressure. It was SO different from the earthy and muted palettes I’d been using for years, and it came with a lot of hiccups. But ultimately, I became hyper-fixated on the challenge. I would constantly think of different colour combinations I wanted to try and scenes I wanted to depict to see how far I could push the boundaries while still encapsulating the reference I was pulling from.
How do you approach a new still life piece? Do you find yourself painting candid scenes, or do you stage objects to align with an idea?
AS: Definitely both! For some pieces, I found myself just stumbling upon a scene that was both candid and gripping, and I’d snap a quick photo to work from later. Other times, I would find myself thinking about a certain scene, and imagining, like, ‘Oh that would look really cool as a painting’, and in those cases I would set up the objects, set the lighting, and take the reference shot.
When I consider your art, I think of the quote by Bill Moyers, ‘Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvellous’. Has creating art changed your perception of the spaces around you?
AS: Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, as a Tumblr kid, I feel like I was conditioned at a young age to just see things from a photographic perspective haha. Like, anything could be beautiful to me. And once I started painting and learning about colour and light, this train of thought was only enhanced. Fun fact, when I first started painting seriously in 2017, my grandma (also an artist, and a huge source of my inspiration, but more to come on that further in the interview hehe) had sent me a huge box of painting supplies—everything I would need to teach myself to paint.
She expressed to me that one of the most important skills an artist possesses is their skill of observation, and in the package, she included this small, rectangular piece of blue-tinted plexiglass. She told me to hold it up to a scene or a painting in order to kind of render it down to a monochromatic palette, to see values more clearly. When I look at the world now, I literally always imagine myself looking through that little piece of plexiglass–but instead of monochrome, my imaginary plexiglass has been cultivated over the years to see almost everything around me as a potential reference source, a potential painting. It’s really fun to look at the world this way, it’s like a little game almost!
Oh wow, that’s an incredible little gift. I especially love that you’ve transformed the plexiglass into an intrinsic tool—it makes me even more curious to explore your creative altars! Shall we?
AS: Yes yes! Welcome to my current altars!
One thing about me (and if you know me well, you know this) is that I am such a weirdo about changing up my studio spaces. I cannot even tell you how many different arrangements of studio spaces I’ve had over the last almost 10 years. There’s something about rearranging or moving into a new space that just gets my creative energy soaring, so I change up my spaces a lot.
My current altars consist of two rooms: my studio for all of my painting and messy endeavours, and my office for more administrative tasks such as answering emails, editing prints, conceptualising new pieces, and sketching (which to me is just as important in my process as the actual painting itself!).
I think my favourite thing about these spaces is their kind of chaotic-ness? In the past, I have tried to keep really tidy and organised spaces like so many other gorgeous artist spaces I see online, but it never really holds for me–I can never sustain it! But over the years, I’ve found I quite like the haphazardness of it all; it’s like controlled chaos to me lol. In so many other aspects of my life, I’m such a control freak, so my studio is the one space where I really just let that all go.
A note for free subscribers
To continue reading Ashley’s interview and unlock her creative prompt, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Doing so gives me the time to find and interview other inspiring guests for Altars & Artists. Your contribution also keeps Ruminations running & this lil writer at her desk! <3
Can’t afford a paid subscription? You can now earn complimentary subscriptions by sharing posts—you’ll be credited for any new subscribers to Ruminations!
Who, or what, are you inspired by? Do you pay tribute to them in your creative spaces?
AS: Oof, this is a loaded question, I feel like so much inspires me. But I would break it up into two sections: persons and emotions.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Ruminations to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.