We recently connected with Ash Schultz and have shared our conversation below.
Ash, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
In August of 2012 I moved to Las Vegas with the purpose of joining my brothers in the fascinating career of a spray paint artist working for a company down on Fremont Street and the Las Vegas Strip. I had predominately been a graphite artist up until this point and I was excited to learn to work with color and in a new medium. I picked up on the process relatively quickly and working with the other artists on the job allowed for an amazing degree of crowd sourcing knowledge, experience and inspiration. It was during this time as a spray paint artist that I began to experiment with other art mediums and ultimately settled on acrylic and oil painting. I education in these primarily came from YouTube since I had no other friends or mentors that were familiar with the medium and I’m a big proponent of “YouTube University”. You can practically learn to do just about anything by watching someone else teach you on YouTube, and thankfully a lot of my favorite artists have YouTube channels demonstrating their knowledge and expertise. It wasn’t long before I began to blend the styles, adding detailed hand painted acrylic elements to my spray painted landscapes and so my particular style was born.
One of my biggest challenges as an artist is learning to work around having aphantasia. In short, it’s the inability to produce mental images, meaning when I close my eyes and try to imagine a tree, or a bird, I don’t see anything. This means that every step to the visualizing process must be done by hand, on paper, or digitally. Usually that’s not so bad, but it would be nice to mentally visualize things. Sometimes I will have a painting “in mind” and just start working on it, only to find I don’t like how it’s turning out. It may not be a completed painting, but it’s still practice.
Ash, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Art has been in my veins since as far back as I can remember. Aside from being the oldest of seven siblings, art was the one thing that set me apart from them, and the majority of my friends growing up. Such were the days before social media and the internet was in it’s infancy and you couldn’t readily find hundreds of artistic people to interact with. I never went to art school and it was a kid named Kimo in 6th grade that taught me the basics of shading with graphite as we drew characters from Nintendo Power magazine in class. Samus Aran and Sonic the Hedgehog were our muses and to this day I can’t even recall what class it was we were in. Some type of math, I think?
I was still very much a graphite focused artists in high school and video game characters were replaced with the fantasy realms of Dungeons and Dragons. I developed a real liking for the various creatures presented in the monsters manual. Ahh, those were the days. I dabbled in painting a bit, but it wasn’t until 2012 when I moved to Las Vegas to become a spray paint artists down on the Strip that I learned to appreciate working with color more. Working down on the Vegas Strip and Fremont Street was quite the spectacle. If you’ve ever been and seen that booth down on Fremont where they paint, I was one of those guys. During that time I dabbled in everything from sculpting, screen printing and copic markers to pastels, acrylic and oil painting. The latter two are my main focus to this day, aside from the spray paint art as well.
I learn through various commission projects that I could use spray paint to create interesting backgrounds and landscapes while painting over the top of it with acrylic paint to incorporate more detailed characters and things that would otherwise require stenciling to achieve with spray paint. The marriage of the two mediums is my main focus of work to this day and a style I find uniquely my own.
I also went on to create a series of spray paint art tutorials that teach people the basic tools and techniques to achieve more with their art than just the standard space scenes, which are common with that style of painting. Through my time on Fremont Street and the Strip we learned to do amazing landscapes, underwater vistas and places you could only imagine, but I noticed on YouTube the majority of videos you see are just the artists making things for your entertainment. Although you can learn and pick up things that way, there was a need to explain things more in depth and I was happy to fill that niche.
These days I work mostly as a mural artist painting themed rooms for an airbnb managing company and I take the occasional mural job on the side. On top of that you can find me a few times a month at Cafe Tu Tu Tangos on International drive painting live and I frequently stock original paintings and select art prints in there for purchase. There’s a handful of comic and horror conventions I frequent throughout the year, less as an income source, and more as a fun one to network with other artists and creatives, while taking a break from day to day life. I’m a big pop culture fan so these conventions are a real joy for me while also giving me an outlet to meet new people and grow my fan base.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
There are few things more thrilling than creating something from nothing and not only being proud of yourself for what you created, but receiving praise from others for it and seeing the joy it brings them. My father was a carpenter and construction worker his whole life and so me and my brothers were his unwilling conscripts in a number of endeavors growing up. As unwilling as we were there was no denying the skills we learned would be invaluable growing up as adults and owning homes of our own that’ll need repairs. Being capable of building things is no different than being an artist. You’re still taking a blank canvas, paper, or wall and with a few unique tools and materials you’re next to being a god.
It’s a firm belief of mine that not everyone needs to be an artist, but that everyone should have skill in making something with their hands. It doesn’t have to be perfect or for the intent to sell, but everyone should experience of satisfaction of building, sewing, painting, sculpting, knitting or basket weaving something, anything, just as long as they do it with their hands. The power of creation is something innate to us all and I think so many of us forget that as we age and give up on these skills. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people talk to me and say something to the tune of “I used to draw, but…”
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Success, money, power? Sure, art isn’t the most Machiavellian approach to status and societal domination, but as someone that’s chosen to make art their career, my goal is to make it a lucrative one. Don’t be mistaken, I love that feeling of being an inspiration to others and the younger generation, and there’s nothing like seeing the look of amazement on peoples faces when you can do something they can’t. However, I’m a single dad, with a child to raise and making sure she has a stable and good life is my chief concern. In this crazy world where the cost of living only seems to go up my goal is to make sure that my time creating paintings is well spent. That also comes with being a small business owner. Art is my career now, not my hobby, so making sure my work and growth as an artist continues to improve and evolve as necessary to achieve those ends is the fuel to my bonfire. 
Contact Info:
- Website: www.AshSchultz.com
- Instagram: @ash_schultz_art
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/ash.schultz150
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/ashschultzart
- tiktok: AshSchultzArt