Ashley Hanson
‘The Shapes of Places’
Every place has a shape: a country, a town, a state. In my work, I use those shapes, to help define the uniqueness of each place I visit. The shape structures the painting but during the process, through constant redrawing and repainting, that shape will change scale, position, orientation, often disappearing and then reappearing until the shape and the painting, the facts and the fiction, the information and imagination, the painting truth and the topographical truth become one.
I often work in series, with the paintings feeding each other, thus allowing all possibilities to be explored. I have a lifelong interest in coastal towns, with their mix of the natural and the man-made, qualities that are echoed in the shapes of American States.
