Art & Mental Health: A Candid Conversation with Ashley Wright

New Visionary Podcast

Mar 09, 2023•43 min

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Episode description

S1 E25. In this episode, I chat with mental health advocate and visual artist Ashley Wright. Based in Southern California, Ashley describes herself as a mental health artist, focusing on the healing power and therapeutic quality of the creative process. Ashley openly shares her journey with CPTSD and shares valuable advice for artists who face similar struggles. Join us for a raw, personal, and deeply impactful discussion surrounding the relationship between art and mental health. Here’s what we discuss:

1. The importance of being gentle with yourself if you have a mental health condition and why it’s essential to let go of guilt or shame if you need to pause on making your art.

2. Why Ashley centers her work on perception and reality in relation to derealization, dissociation, and maladaptive daydreaming.

3. What inspired Ashley to focus on landscape in her work, and why she believes it’s important to create your own rules.

4. The reasons why we believe it’s imperative to enjoy the creative process and return to that child-like place of creating work with wonder, joy, and love (without worrying so much about the end result!)

About Ashley:

Ashley’s passion for the arts has been present ever since her childhood and has expanded across multiple mediums. It started with drawing and then quickly expanded into choir, band, orchestra, and theater. It wasn't until her senior year of her BA in Music at the University of Redlands where Ashley took a painting class for the first time and she hasn't stopped painting since then.

Being tucked away in the Inland Empire, Ashley is surrounded by the beautiful San Bernardino National Forest, Joshua Tree National Park, Santa Rosa Wilderness, and the Angeles National Forest. These natural landscapes have played a huge part in her life and continue to inspire her art. Much of the imagery Ashley’s paintings are directly inspired by her surroundings, the 80s and 90s nostalgia, sci-fi, and pop culture.

Ashley’s mental health is an important part of her life and directly impacts and represents her art. She has struggled with CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). CPTSD comes with Dissociation, Derealization, and Maladaptive Daydreaming. These coping mechanisms helped saved Ashley’s life but living with them can feel like you constantly have one foot in reality and one foot out. These concepts influence Ashley’s art through variance in vibrancy, perception, style, and texture.