Ashley Shellhause was born Ashley Hughes in Columbus, Ohio.  In 2004 she earned her Bachelor of Arts with concentrations in painting and graphic design from Otterbein College.  She graduated with her MFA from Miami University in 2010.  Currently she works full time as an artist.

 Two things drive my work: content and materials.

Each piece I create is a visual representation of my thoughts about the relationship between our man-made world and the natural world, whether it is a hope, worry or simple observation.  I see and understand both sides of the current conflict, be it global warming, the green movement, or a cap on emissions.  Call it what you will, it’s a debate about how humans fit into the natural order of things and what our responsibilities are to that natural order.  Neither side of the argument is viable in the extreme. We can’t go back to a pristine ecosystem, the way it was before people existed, but neither can we continue as we are.  We have to compromise and find a middle path.  My ideas come from the research that must be done to find that middle path.  Scientists face the impossible task of untangling all the connections in an environment to figure out how each element relates to the others so that we can make informed decisions about where to go from here.  The enormity of this task gives me inspiration for my work.  Many of my pieces are about the amazing intricacies and similarities that can be found between the smallest bits of any given ecosystem or across huge leaps in scale.  Others take a step back to explore places where we have successfully integrated with our surroundings, or where we have failed.   Some make conjectures about what separates and unites us with the rest of nature.  We are just beginning to understand the complexity of the problem at hand, and through my art I hope to make that complexity more available to a wider audience.

Content drives the overall idea of a piece, but most of my formal decisions are arrived at through my interaction with the materials.  I let the natural qualities of the materials come through in the finished pieces.  The chalky feel of charcoal, the slight shine powdered graphite can give to paper, the fluidity of ink, all are important to how I go about creating a piece.  Often, I push the materials to their limits.  The most common way I do this is by thinning acrylic paint down with water and then staining canvas with it.  This can create a variety of visual effects depending on whether or not it is allowed to pool, if salt is added, or if some portions have been blocked out with wax or tape.  It’s a little unpredictable, which sets up a dialogue between the painting and myself.  Each piece is a little experiment that teaches me something about the materials.