We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ashley Sellner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ashley, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I worked for years as a photographer, weddings, children’s portraiture, and interiors, but I started on film. Once the industry changed over to a digital platform, I knew my days were numbered. Spending hours in front of the computer and learning new software to keep up with my peers did not interest me. I missed working with my hands. At lunch with a friend, I was asked the question – what do you do for fun? That was 10 years ago and I have been working as an artist ever since. About a year into my exploration, I began selling my pieces. My business has grown incrementally each year.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have also found inspiration in the exploration of sacred space, and the deep communion that arises from an authentic experience with creation. I believe I am on a pilgrimage between two homes – the home of my childhood spent on a mountain in Southwest Virginia and the heavenly home where I will come to rest. In order to wander between the two with intention, I am compelled to meditate upon moments – a long-range view enveloped by clouds, gathering dusk in the foothills, a trail walked with chosen company. These visual meditations become abstracted iterations of place and time, inviting the viewer to reflect on their own unique pilgrimage.

Using images and plein air studies from my travels to the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia as a catalyst, I rely on a process that is both intuitive and experimental, exploring and manipulating the limits of each medium. The first wash of paint is both spontaneous and chaotic giving rise to gestural marks and abstraction. Sometimes collaged elements build layers, allowing for improvisation and dissonance. Fields of color move and shift until the relationship between the layers forms a resolved narrative.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Perfection. I sidestepped a studio art major because of this monkey on my back. In my early adulthood, I didn’t feel like I had something significant or relevant to say through my work. I loved art history, so I committed to the study of others’ work. Sadly, I missed the opportunity to study beneath artists who I admire, and who would have walked me through the process.

Entering my forties, I began to care less about how I was perceived. I realized that art was my passion and that I could spend a lifetime learning how to best express myself. Failure and working through the intricacies of each painting is a daily challenge and I am invigorated when I step into my studio.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Makoto Fujimara’s book Art + Faith; A Theology of Making has shaped my practice and connected an integral part of my being, my faith, with my creativity. Like perfection, I have needed to fight against the cultural influences of usefulness and efficiency. The act of creating for me is not formulaic. I spend many days experimenting with new media and processes in an attempt to grow my practice of painting and collage. There are days when I have nothing to show from my labor. In the world of business, this would feel superfluous. But I love what Fujimara says about what’s “extra”:

“Emily Dickinson used lots of dashes and hyphens, despite editors of her time wanting her to remove them because they found them unnecessary for the purposes of a poem…these ‘unnecessary’ elements were her main identity. If that is true, then what may be gratuitous, the “extra” of our world, may turn out to be the most essential. So Dickinson’s dashes speak of reality far beyond our ‘use.'” Art + Faith, 17
I have to remind myself that what is essential for me and my own development is counter-cultural.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ashleysellner.com
• Instagram: @a.sellner.art