​    Ever since I was three years old, I've secretly commemorated Art with myself: Ashley, A for Art. ​

    It was Art that liberated me from being held hostage by hypersensitivity, suffocated by life's upheavals, and engulfed by waves of emotion while pretending to be undisturbed. Art allowed me to be emotional on canvas while the world demanded rationality. It taught me that although the exaggerated colors in my self-portraits distort reality, they are my conversations with myself. And now, it has become more than my inner dialogue; Art is now the language I speak and enhance with my hands and eyes.