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Drawing, both with graphite and paint, is the central element of my work. I am attracted to the act of drawing for its directness, tactility, and capacity for conveying emotional experience. I feel that the most interesting art is made at the place where technique and intuition meet. Because of this belief, I seek to balance traditional drafting skills with looser, more instinctual approaches. Blind contour drawing and automatic writing are important tools I use to emphasize gestural line quality as well as autobiographical mapping. Often working with my eyes closed, I seek to capture a direct link to spontaneity and to the subconscious mind. This method is countered with slow and careful evaluation between layers, providing a balance of structure and accident, restraint and recklessness, deliberation and instinct. Time, memory and desire are themes that crop up repeatedly in my work. While my subject matter references both the figure and landscape, it always contains a prevailing sense of ambiguity. I am most intrigued by “gray areas,” where I feel truth exists and the most compelling subjects are found. Ashlynn Browning Reviews and Essays
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Ten Best Shows in the Triangle, 2005." Margie Stewart and Ashlynn Browning at Lee Hansley Gallery, May 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. 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.
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. |
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