REVIEWS AND ESSAYS

Her painting is lush and primal, impulsive and a bit unsettling. In her painting "Onward and Upward", Browning embraced that spirit once embraced by the untethered American beast of Abstract Expressionism. "My goal is to strike a balance of structure and accident, restraint and recklessness, deliberation and instinct. This resonates with me as being truthful." From a ground of gray/green, strokes of white and charcoal rushed and tumbled down the face of the painting, brown scumbled gestures scarred the bottom face, and acrobatic red calligraphy laced the top, describing that difficult-to-grip space between "restraint and recklessness." Browning paints the messy, inexorable language of longing.
Scott Lucas, Carolina's Got Art Exhibition, October 2009

building/ burning/ growing is Ashlynn Browning's collection of recent mixed media works on paper at Flanders Gallery. These works flaunt the beauty of their materials in compositions of endless variation and resonant consistency. In "Afternoon Languor Turns to Dusk," the work's layered surface reflects the history of its making and plays up the luxuriousness of paint itself. Here, as in many of the works on view, Browning integrates the grids she has explored in past paintings, but now she seems to have expanded the story, allowing organic forms to emerge in and around the initial structure.
A small grouping of the work includes the artist's gutsy torn pieces, works that appear to be fragments of larger works, breathless abbreviations of Browning's painterly prowess. Perhaps a few nonbelievers might be enticed by the considerable pleasure to be had in these well-constructed offerings.
Amy White, Independent Weekly, Sept. 24, 2008.

Browning has always had a little bit of a Cy Twombly vibe with her works on paper, but these new pieces seem more confident and more personal to her own unique viewpoint. They are still as charged with energy as before, but now bold color has swept onto the panels to amazing effect. Non-figurative artists sometimes have a hard go here in our fair state, where people are inclined to lean toward bland landscapes and corporate wallpaper. But hopefully, with the area growing in sophistication more and more, Browning will be recognized for what she is — a talented, competent art professional worthy of your patronage and collecting.
Louis St. Lewis, Metro Magazine, September issue, 2008.

Overall, Browning pursues a style that "balances order and chaos, emotion and restraint, the inner and outer life," though it is easy to assume that her chunky networks are the result of quick sketches and automatic immediacy. Time spent with her lush surfaces and gestures reveals a deeply structured nature, a process ruled by controlled accidents that weave and build upon themselves layer by layer, edit by careful edit.
Leah Stoddard, catalogue essay, Artspace: Tangible Gestures exhibition, November 2007.

The influence of nature on this new body of work is apparent on many levels. There is a fecundity in the abundance of pieces, a feeling of fertility, evidence of the life force that catalyzed their production. It is also interesting to note the shift in these works from linguistic gestural modes that reference the art of Cy Twombly to an abstract, organic impulse that seems more in the lineage of painter Joan Mitchell.
Amy White, Independent Weekly, Aug. 22, 2007

Ashlynn Browning is a young artist on the rise with a dedication to her craft and a sensitivity to line that rivals the early work of Cy Twombly.
Louis St. Lewis, Metro Magazine, December issue, 2006.

Informed by Mark Tobey's ghostly all-over marks, Cy Twombly's tangled scribbles and the elegance of Asian calligraphy, Browning forges her own linear armature.
Michele Natale, Independent Weekly, June 21, 2006.

"Ten Best Shows in the Triangle, 2005." Margie Stewart and Ashlynn Browning at Lee Hansley Gallery, May 2005.
Blue Greenberg, Durham Herald-Sun, Dec. 29, 2005.

Browning's work is based on written marks freely scrawled in graphite or oil stick, then torn up and layered onto canvas, leaving their meaning both legible and obscured. A restricted palette of whites, grays and blacks makes the eye concentrate on the qualities of line--heavy, fine, sure, nervous--that unfurl across her surfaces. There is a Zen quality to these works, and some, such as in "Peace and Fury," would seem to reference Chinese ink-brushed mountainscapes, though the ostensible subject matter is quite different.
Michele Natale, Raleigh News and Observer, January 7, 2005.

Ashlynn's work is like calligraphy, like a dance. It reminds me of Twombly, of the orient--rugged mental landscapes and the gentle scratchings of ghosts. Louis St. Lewis, Metro Magazine, April issue, 2005.

Browning's paintings are deceptively simple, some scribbly black lines on a sheet of paper, with touches of creamy paint or a smudge of black and a few collaged elements. "Sensory" is just one example, however, of how complex and carefully thought out they are. Browning has a surety of composition and line that is quite remarkable for someone so young. Sometimes her scribbles almost turn into a decipherable word; sometimes a face almost comes into focus. It is that spectral touch that will pull you in for a second look.
Blue Greenberg, Durham Herald-Sun, April 24, 2005.

There is another sort of intimacy in art that eliminates the image as a goal and forces the viewer to deal more directly with the means. Ashlynn Browning creates work very much in this vein. Her drawing is participatory-upon coming to her work the viewer is invited to make the work with her-to follow her hand as spaces and events are created. This is perhaps the most intimate experience one can have with an art work. It is an experience special to drawing and one which is rarely if ever experienced in painting. The poetry of her work is palpable.
Gregory Amenoff, catalogue essay, CUE Art Foundation Exhibition: 2002-2003 Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant Winners. June 2004.