About the artist

​

Ashley Gill is a Charlottesville-based artist, freelance graphic designer and adjunct art professor at Piedmont Virginia Community College.  After earning a BFA from James Madison University, Ashley started her career in illustration, graphic design and broadcast graphics in the Washington, DC area. While she enjoyed a her work in the graphic arts, it didn’t allow for as much creativity as she’d envisioned, so she picked up a paintbrush and taught herself how to paint. Since that time in her

mid-20s, she hasn’t stopped.

​

Ashley’s trademark pattern emerged from doodles she did as a teenager while talking on the phone or daydreaming in school.

In her art, there is frequently no specific focal point. Instead, the objective is for the viewer’s eye to move throughout the painting to explore how colors, shapes and patterns interact. She works primarily in acrylic because she loves the flexibility of the medium, which allows her to blend colors using traditional techniques, layer washes like a watercolorist and even draw fine detail.  Ashley’s earliest paintings were mostly on canvas and paper but in recent years, her paintings have evolved to often include a third dimension, using wood, architectural elements and commonly found materials.