Feral Whimsy, Beautiful Nightmares
Beverley Ashe at JP Contemporáneo

By Sara Fasy for the Atención

The bride lifts her gauzy gown and propels herself forward. But she is not dancing; she is fleeing an attacking swan. A woman tilted in space spews flowers through a clenched red-lipped mouth. A green-haired naked woman, embedded in poisonously beautiful color, angrily demands that the viewer “Tell Her She’s Pretty”. You might say that Beverley Ashe is drawn to the dark side of life. Yet in her paintings there is always an alluring juxtaposition: ethereal beauty cavorting with violence, humor with poison, image and color that is overtly lovely in bed with the covertly hideous. In the stunning mixed media works currently displayed at JP Contemporáneo at the Instituto Allende, Ashe uses found images from the Internet, lyrical painting, and scribbled words to explore love, lust, anxiety, and conflict.

Visiting her current exhibit at the Instituto Allende, the viewer might first be struck by the exquisitely tender palette- ethereal soft blues, rich gold, rosy streaks and clean white washes across the canvas. The effect is hushed, as though you have stepped into a church. Then you notice that the figures, mostly women, have oddly tight mouths, teeth clenched, and eyes narrowed. Static beauty allies itself with tension. These are figures frozen in moments that are teeming with contradiction. Take, for example, the photographic image of a wholesome young woman with a toothy smile. Above that engaging smile we see her hideously swollen black eye: “This is How She Tells it; This is How it Went”. The viewer wonders, how did the woman get the shiner? Ashe explains, “According to her, it was an accident - and maybe it was, maybe it wasn't - but it reminded me of my own black eyes and the stories that went with them. Because even when the cause was innocent, people couldn't look at me, and some still continued to assume (despite my story) that I must have gotten hit by my boyfriend and wasn't admitting to it. A black eye on a woman is really a suspect thing.” Yet it is precisely the personal that Ashe has moved away from in her work. She means to find images that help to catapult the personal to a collective consciousness, in this case, the familiar notion of putting a “good face” on pain and suffering.

Ashe organizes her work in series: Dreams and Disturbances, Leche, Flies, Fetish Kits, The Art of War. Each series allows her room to seek images and words that follow a theme to a provocative fruition. The Art of War, inspired by the 6th century military treatise by Sun Tzu, came about because of the real war in Iraq and the questions about how we handle conflict. She wanted to examine the nature of fights, and of wounds. Do we wear our wounds proudly, or with shame? To look hard at the nature of conflict is to peel back many layers in an attempt to find wisdom.

Her newest series, Leche, looks at how the world views women, and how women view themselves. In a work of lyricism and mystery, she creates an androgynous figure, like a primitive sculpture in its simplicity of line. But look closer. There are floral patterns of papel picado and block letters spelling a fragment of the word, “felicidades”. Five delicate butterflies fly through the yellow-gold air of the canvas. The words “puta” and “madre” play around the butterflies. The work is titled, Morpho. “Because I’m in Mexico, the macho culture, and words like puta/madre come into play. I’m just beginning to learn the language, so most of the nuances are lost on me, but I’m still falling in love with words. I often begin a work with text as inspiration.” Ashe mentions that in her years in New York, she frequently attended poetry readings and the resonance of words and phrases led her to find images that spun off from those words. Sometimes the inspiration is a memory, or a color. Everything comes together in a kind of subconscious rhythm. It’s not, she says, a conscious attempt to make a statement. “I follow serial obsessions. Sometimes those obsessions can also end up as shows I curate with other artists.”

Ashe lived in New York City and spent fourteen years prior to her arrival here in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The peaceful austerity of the desert landscape and the shock of urban angst mix provocatively in her work. The images create a strange brew of sexual tension, vulnerability, humor, anxiety and anger. She believes that truth is found by seeking not only that which pleases, but that which repels. “From the experience of my own detours, I carry secrets. These provide empathic ground for my work as an artist. In the studio, I’m exploring a kind of dark dream where even nightmares can be beautiful.”

Beverley Ashe will exhibit her works from December 13 through January 9 at the JP Contemporáneo of the Instituto Allende, Ancha de San Antonio #20. Gallery hours are 11-4, Wed-Mon (Closed Tuesdays). The show can be previewed online at www.jpcontemporaneo.com.

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