Ashley Eliza Williams

Region: West

There is a direct relationship between the vastness of the natural landscape and the expansiveness of the human imagination. Our capacity for creative thought is proportional to the complexity of our environment. I am acutely aware that as wilderness is displaced by the products of human endeavor, the scope of our emotional expression narrows in order to fit within a more constrained reality. My work is an attempt to compensate for this loss of phenomenological experience, a reaction against the displacement of our inner worlds by the increasingly fragmented landscape that we inhabit. My paintings are windows into an inner landscape composed of forces, textures, and patterns from the natural world. Painting is a way to expand my library of perceptions, an attempt to remember ancient landscapes and dream of new ones, and to preserve memories that allow us to imagine different ways of interacting with nature.