Mary Ashley Clark

Red Wall Flowers, 2021
Monotype with pastel and oil on paper. 29.5” x 29.5"

Artist Statement

Mary Ashley Clark is an American artist from Brevard, North Carolina. Her passion for art began at the age of four, serving as a way to interpret and explore a complex and sophisticated world for which she lacked the vocabulary to describe. Mary Ashley continued to pursue art throughout high school and further into college.She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors from Brevard College, where she received distinctions including the Outstanding Art Major Award, the Outstanding Advancement in Painting Award, and the Division Chair’s Choice Award. Additionally, Mary Ashley deepened her engagement with contemporary art through two internships at the Asheville Art Museum, working in both learning and engagement as well as visitor research and evaluation.Her current work is avant-garde in nature, aiming to capture mundane and simple scenes in ways that feel obscure yet balanced—challenging traditional modes of representation. She works primarily in soft pastels, oil paint, and printmaking—mediums she combines deliberately to build depth, texture, and dynamic visual narratives. Her practice is grounded in an ongoing investigation of line, color, pattern, and space, with particular emphasis on the emotional possibilities of color theory.Familiarity is central to her process. Mary Ashley often returns to a subject or image through repeated renderings, striving to understand its nuances and emotional undertones. By abstracting her subjects, she distills each scene to its most essential elements—what matters most, both visually and emotionally. Many of her pieces depict everyday objects or interior spaces drawn from memory, imagination, or dreams—transformed into compositions that feel both intimate and enigmatic. Her work offers a glimpse into another life or moment in time, inviting viewers to interpret the story through their own lens and emotional experience.Through her art, Mary Ashley invites viewers to pause—to slow down and engage with moments that might otherwise go unnoticed. By transforming the ordinary into the abstract, she encourages reflection, emotional connection, and open interpretation—creating space for comfort, curiosity, and quiet discovery.