Ashley Chase Andrews Catalog

ASHLEY CHASE ANDREWS

IMPULSE

ASHLEY CHASE ANDREWS

2014 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2016

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am interested in blending landscape, by making large shapes and integrating them with mark making, eliminating the horizon line, and painting to the edges of the canvas. Painting for me is the freedom of making marks, trying to discover the balance of line, color, volume, and personal strokes, and trying to compete with and absorb the soul of The Greats.â&#x20AC;?

â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Ashley Chase Andrews

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Ashley Chase Andrews’ Impulse Featured at the Lionheart Gallery New Exhibition opens on May 6, 2016 through July 3, 2016 Pound Ridge, New York – (April 25, 2016) Currently based in North Salem, New York, abstract artist Ashley Chase Andrews was raised in Santa Monica and credits her Californian upbringing with sparking her love of freedom and adventure. “I was never afraid,” she says. “No fear. I was a risk taker.” In her new exhibition Impulse, the artist showcases large expressive paintings that exude the thrill of discovery in the natural world as well as the internal, private worlds of imagination, emotion, and memory. “I am interested in blending landscape, by making large shapes and integrating them with mark making, eliminating the horizon line, and painting to the edges of the canvas,” Andrews muses, adding that she is thinking formally at all times. “Painting for me is the freedom of making marks, trying to discover the balance of line, color, volume, and personal strokes, and trying to compete with and absorb the soul of The Greats.” She refers to the likes of Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name but a few of her artistic influences. Andrews begins with unstretched canvas tacked to her studio wall and proceeds to draw with charcoal or oil sticks and paint in acrylic or oil. She works big, she works fast, and she spontaneously responds to whatever color or marks she is using at the moment, constantly building up and reworking layers. The artist often writes and draws directly on the canvas, incorporating symbols, shapes, and personal messages: numbers, words, foods, places, political events. Like partially obscured graffiti, these are half-covered with more layers of paint so the effect is the odd phrase or recognizable image half emerging from fields of line and color. The resulting dreamscapes merge the current with the past, the historical with the present. Even when created in a series, each Andrews composition is eclectic and fresh in its own way. The works in Impulse features the artist’s wide variety of marks. Drips, scribbles, cross hatches, handprints, circles, streaks, and parabolas join forces with wide thick brushstrokes and swatches of vibrant colors that pulse from cooler toned backgrounds: hot sunset pink, neon aqua, glowing mauve and tangerine. The paintings on view include the Handwriting series; in Handwriting/ Florida/ Lincoln Road, Andrews creates a visual feast by enhancing broad swatches of warm lavender and rosy grey with playful paint drips, passionate streaks in poppy orange, and energetic charcoal lines suggestive of an interior here, a word there.

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These paintings are sensory as well and hark to Andrews’ love of travel and exploration. Nature is a huge part of her life; the ocean in particular is important to this artist, and she has spent much time swimming in the surf. She has also been inspired by locations like Florida, Africa, Mexico, and the Caribbean as well as her native West Coast. Her creativity is fueled by sights, sounds, jewelry, rugs, spices, colors of walls, the ancient fading of the towns and cities, and of course the hues of the sea. When asked what she finds most compelling about Andrews’s paintings, Lionheart Gallery Director Susan Grissom replies, “I love her sense of liberation and fierceness. Watching Ashley sketch out a study on newsprint and charcoal, I have felt the exciting spontaneity of her work. Her color palette and the elements she adds are always a wonderful surprise.” View Impulse by Ashley Chase Andrews at the Lionheart Gallery’s Exhibition, opening May 6, 2016 and running through July 3, 2016, Wednesday through Saturday, from 11 AM to 5 PM, and Sunday from 12 noon to 4 PM. For more information and directions to the gallery at 27 Westchester Avenue in Pound Ridge, New York, visit www.thelionheartgallery.com or call 914 764 8689.

IMPULSE

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Handwriting/Florida/Musings, 2016 Acrylic on Paper 62” x 69”

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Handwriting/Florida/Reality, 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 69” x 66”

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Handwriting/Florida/Biscane Bay, 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 55” x 68”

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Handwriting/Florida/Lincoln Road, 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 55” x 72”

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Handwriting/Florida/Boca, 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 50” x 66”

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Handwriting/Florida/Palm Beach, 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 57” x 73”

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Handwriting/Florida/Wynward, 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 55” x 61”

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Handwriting/California/Taco, 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 55” x 64”

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Handwriting/India/Delhi, 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 58” x 61”

EXHIBITION PHOTOS

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