Ashley Bradford -- Fine Art

Graphite was Ashley's first love as a drawing medium; from a very young age, she taught herself to work with pencils. In college, her skills with pencils were refined and her media broadened to include charcoal and conté crayon. In 1992, she discovered what an excellent surface frosted mylar is for accepting fine nuances of graphite tones, and commenced creating all graphite drawings on mylar.

The drawings of bones arose as an exploration of feelings surrounding the history of an object or place. In these drawings, Ashley tries to capture the whispers of a deserted space, like the echoes in the empty old plantation homes she used to visit as a child. The drawings of antlers grew out of a desire to further explore these white forms in space.

Mylar allows for excellent blending, very dark coverage, and complete erasure without destruction of the surface. The drawback is having to use cotton gloves or some other method of keeping skin oils off the surface; any fingerprint on the surface affects the way the graphite goes on.

All of these drawings with the exception of "Pisces" were shown at Angelfall Studios in November 2003.

Copyright 1991 - 2004. All rights reserved.