Bekah Ash is a born and raised Iowa girl.

Surrounded by a creative family, full of artists, she was taught the appreciation of the arts from a young age. After graduating from the University of Iowa in 2002 with a degree in Art and Honors in Art Education, she began pursuing the dream of being an artist, with the support and enthusiasm of Cody Ash.

Shy and introverted as a child, Bekah was content to let her imagination entertain her. She has always been fascinated by people, spending hours as a child creating fictional stories to characters in her drawings, dolls and people watching. It is not surprising to find that these qualities have transformed into the adulthood passion of painting fictional characters with oil on canvas.

Ash uses the characters in her paintings to tell stories of interactions, emotions, memories and relationships. The most successful pieces are those that are most spontaneous and often happen when it is a new drawing on an old painting.

Originally focusing on portrait pieces, Ash uses oil on canvas to paint head and shoulder representations, relying on subtle expressions, color and composition to describe a scenario. These pieces are interpreted differently by people due to the lack of information, and the mood of a piece can easily change with it’s setting and surroundings.

Ash is far too manic, easily bored and impulsive (positive attributes in the eyes of an artist) to stick to just oil on canvas. The next few sections detail the progression of styles, outside oil on canvas, which she has explored.

A plethora of small collage pieces were created during a move that prevented her from working on large canvas in the spring of '05. These color studies served not only as a different style to explore, but an excellent drawing exercise in color and composition. The bold outlines are reminiscent of the drawing style on canvas.

In the Summer of '05, Ash was inspired by a fellow artist at an art festival in Plymouth , MI. She in turn began working on plywood with acrylic paint and bits of collage. The characters in these pieces are drawn in a more illustrative/ figurative style. Ash continues to work on these light hearted, "folksy" pieces, especially when it is nice out and she drags her supplies to the driveway so she can work in the sun.

 

In the spring of '06, Ash was inspired by the lyrics of the music she listened to when painting and began incorporating text into her portraits. This new addition steers interpretation. These works are very personal to the artist and served as a working journal. Ash continues using text today but less frequently and in a more simplified manner.

 

 

Currently, Ash has been concentrating on paintings in series. This usually occurs on an "on" night when several pieces take on the same appeal/character. While the idea of series started spontaneously, Ash was instantly attracted to creating "groups". The first series, in which Ash made a conscious effort was titled, Heavy Headed Girls, sold in a gallery in Dubuque in the fall of '06. The series How It Works No. 1-3 were made for a photo shoot for Do it Yourself, a feature of Better Homes and Gardens.

Ash finds it appealing to branch out from her original style and experiment with new materials and styles but the one thing remains consistent and that is the love for portraiture, color harmony and strong black lines.