HI, I'M ASHLEY.
I believe that paint is a conduit for touch in a digital world.
In 2014 I quit my comfy corporate job and moved 250 miles away from my fiance to become a full time artist. For three painful years my partner and I lived in different cities. On the day before our wedding, I administered a semester critique, and drove two and a half hours to make my wedding rehearsal!
Although I am now happily married and occupying the same zip code as my husband, my personal experience of loss and absence drove me to a deeper understanding of how paint can be a conduit for touch.
As a representational figure painter, I am on a mission to allow others to experience this tangible, sensory experience with their loved ones.
Ashley Cassens is a native Floridian who earned her BFA from Florida Southern College in 2006 and an MFA from Florida Atlantic University in 2017. In addition to her Graduate Teaching Assistantship in the MFA program, she has been awarded the Provost Fellowship, two Graduate Advisory Board Grants, a Friedland Grant, a Rothenberger Scholarship, an Ambassador of the Arts Scholarship, and was twice awarded a Women in the Visual Arts Scholarship.
She has exhibited her work at the ARC Gallery in Chicago, The Cornell Museum in Delray Beach, the Box Gallery in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. She has studied in workshops with Julian Schnabel and Steven Assael. In 2016 she worked at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL in museum education, furthering her passion for teaching. She is certified to teach Art K-12 and enjoys teaching Elementary Art by "day".
Her recent paintings juxtapose craft and crushingly lovely figure painting in her favorite medium, oil paint.
