Ashley Art Anderson

So I’ve been following Ashley on Instagram for over a year now, and I’ve been consistently impressed by their talent, creativity and the range of their portfolio. They say quite succinctly that they are a pastel artist, but to say that’s all they are is like saying Liberace was only mildly into Candelabras. Okay I’ll be honest. I don’t know how that line made it past the edit. I guess I hope people will find it endearing? But my point is that Ashley has tremendous range and potential as an artist and I wanted to make that clear upfront.

So a little bit more about the artist, they are based in Los Angeles, and work, primarily using pastels, as I discussed above. They are open to, and accept commissions, and also do custom pet portraits. It was these popping up on my feed that first inspired me to write this feature. I was just blown away by the skill it takes to create photorealistic images of people’s furry little friends. The precision, focus and talent this requires is well beyond me, and so I eagerly added them to my planned week of spotlights on the lead up to Christmas.

I love when an artist has a distinct presence in their art, and continues to explore and develop on themes. I was particularly taken with some of these phenomenal portraits which feature an intermixing of life and death. They are hauntingly beautiful and something about the bold colours, the vibrancy as well as the juxtaposing subject matter speak to me very deeply. In particular I really liked the skeleton, surrounded by living, breathing animals. It speaks to the cyclical nature of life and the infinite rebirth of all things. It’s also just a strikingly lovely image and I cannot imagine the time it takes to compose such a piece.

As I mentioned above, Ashley does Pet portraits, which can be a fantastic way to immortalise or commemorate the furry family, and with the amazing quality of Ashley’s images I’d say it’s more than worth it. If you’re interested, Ashley outlines her Commission policy and guidelines including prices on her site, and you can check that out here.

If you like the look of Ashley’s work, you can buy the designs either as prints or on a variety of things including pins, stickers or other accessories via her store. It’s super neat. It’ll have to be when they come back in stock but I’m seriously considering snagging the Rebirth Enamel Pin because I love the design so much. Equally these dinosaur mugs are super rad, blending the functionalism of a usable object with a breathtaking piece of art.