Originally from the UK, Ashley Cullen moved to Canberra to pursue her love of art at the Australian National University. Her portraits chart an intensely personal vision of the human experience, capturing people at their most raw and vulnerable moments. We asked Ashley some questions to get a view behind the scenes of her Arts Practice and what goes into an exhibition.

Ashley’s current exhibition God’s Loose Tooth: Lullabies, Myths and Madness is on in Gallery 1 and 2 until the 25th of July. Or you can see it online HERE!

1. How would you describe your Arts Practice?

I like to describe the way I work as a sculptural approach to painting. I use a lot of impasto medium and palette knives, often building up the form of a subject from a few initial marks until the paint lifts off the canvas. I love the human figure and the subtle way that people give themselves away with expression and body language— it has always felt natural to explore emotion and the body using a textured, thick approach.

2. Have you done any study? related to art or not?

I graduated from the Australian National University in December 2020 with two Bachelor degrees; one in visual art and one in literature. In art school, I specialised in painting and that taught me a lot about discipline. You had to be very prolific; always creating multiple things for different projects and that has definitely translated into the way I work now.

The other half of my education filters through into my practice a lot; I’ve always loved stories and myths and so I often think about ways to implement elements of narrative within my own work.

3. What do you find most inspiring about your art space?

I work in a room that has been renovated into a studio space; its always cluttered with work and paint palettes. I love painting alone and so the solitary nature of the studio gives me the freedom to explore whatever subject I like.

4. What does a studio day in your life look like?

It always starts with coffee, then writing a list of the ‘boring’ things that I need to get done; it could be paperwork, framing dry pieces, picking up a tube of paint or a medium that I’m running low on. After those things are done, it’s straight to painting until I’m exhausted and can’t hold a brush up anymore. While in the studio, I like to work from a mixture of references and life; sometimes I will ask one of my sisters to pose for me and take photographs or do some sketches. Those references ultimately form the bones of a painting, where I’ll imagine the scene that I want to paint them in or look at old photographs from places I’ve travelled.

5. How have you grown as an artist since starting out?

When I started out, everything about the art world seemed uncertain and unknowable, like you needed a secret handshake to ‘get it’. I was always anxious about whether my work was good enough and found it hard to articulate exactly what I wanted to express in a painting with words. Now I’m much less worried about those things— I just paint what I like and try to let the work speak for itself. Most of the time I’m much more interested in how other people interpret a painting than my own ideas about a piece anyway.

6. What gets you up in the morning?

Only coffee!

7. How did you stay focused and original when starting out?

Luckily I’ve never had much of an issue with staying focused; I’m pretty obsessive with painting and think about it almost like an addiction. I feel antsy and guilty if I go a day without working on a piece. Originality was introduced to me as a ‘flawed’ concept in art school— if it was good enough for old master’s to steal one another’s painting techniques, there was no reason why we couldn’t do that too! We were encouraged to paint a lot of studies of other artist’s work and chart how those influences translated into our own pieces, and after studying other people’s art for so long I was itching to explore my own subjects by the end of the day.

8. What are the biggest challenges facing working artists and how do you overcome them?

For me, it’s definitely the financial aspect of working in a creative industry. Honestly, I haven’t really overcome that challenge yet, but working multiple jobs definitely helps.

9. What do you read, watch, listen to, do to stay inspired?

I love reading about myths and folklore. I studied classics as a minor at university and fell in love with the way that ancient Greco-Roman stories portray people in such a fallible, vulnerable way. I was born in England and grew up around a lot of stories about fairies and hidden creatures; that magic of not ‘knowing’ everything about the world is a constant source of inspiration for me.

10. Do you have any advice for other artists?

My advice is to not listen to advice! Whatever it is that you want to express through your art will be successful with time and consistent practise.