Ansley Pye

I am a native San Diegan, but spent the first part of my adult life traveling throughout Europe and the Middle East. After attending La Sorbonne, I returned to San Diego. It was there where my life took a distinguishing turn. I was diagnosed with MS at the age of 29. Upon the realization that my life was never to be the same, I began my journey as a professional artist. The process of creating art has been one of my strongest healers. I started out as a watercolorist and gradually was drawn towards working in oil. The first part of my career as a professional artist was focused on the shapes and colors in the natural world around me, and the subject matter reflecting my personal struggle with MS. I chose to paint leaves and fruit in a sensual way but always with the marks of time and damage. It was the uniqueness of the blemishes in which I saw the beauty. I transitioned to figurative work and incorporated both my botanical  imagery as well as the random marks, lines, and splatters representing the patterns and marks left behind on each of us from our own life events.  In these last few years I have moved to abstract art work that I feel is the most honest depiction of this symbolism. My textural abstract art work comes from an accumulation of years of exploring texture and color relationships. Each piece is comprised of layers of oil paint, using no medium, and left to dry prior to the application of the next layer. These oil paintings are reflective of the many layers we all possess within the totality of being human. Each event, each tragedy, each joy leaves a mark. This has been a theme throughout all of my various styles of artistic expression. I find the palette knife/squeegee work to be the most honest in its seemingly random happening that results in a beautiful tapestry of color, form, and shape.