The Knapp Gallery continues its tradition of First Friday openings and welcomes back Ashley Flynn In her second solo show: Expelled From Eden. Cathartic and intuitive paintings, Ashley Flynn's artwork breathe new liberating perspective into our structured and otherwise pedantic rigid focus. Flynn, 24 years old, a 4th year student at Moore College of Art & Design, offers up a bold and provocative depiction of the human condition.
Uniquely unorthodox is Ashley's presentation. Painting outside the lines best describes Ashley's blending of wall paintings with her paper and canvas works. Converting the Knapp Gallery walls into linear visionscapes, Ashley's situational "environ-art" visually redefines writer’s stream of consciousness.
Flynn's dramatic delivery is not without substantive backup. Reminiscent of Dostoyevsky’s power, Ashley’s deft brush strikes out at the depravity of man with the poignancy of Baldwin prose. We are caught betwixt and between, though mostly in denial. None can escape. Invariably, we find ourselves amidst the charcoal, pastel and paint. Ashley is heavy-handed and relentless in delivering her visual homily. With remarkable urgency, driven by her own demons, a maturity well beyond her years, Ashley shows no restraint.
With a stellar review by Libby Rosof in "The Art Blog" Flynn's career gathers momentum at an exponential rate. Cathartic and intuitive paintings', cutting across the grain of our comfort, Expelled from Eden, delivers urgency to our doorstep. Ashley unabashedly confronts the elephant labeled "Collective responsibility" sitting front and center in our living rooms. Ashley's paintings are not for the weak-hearted. Intense and exquisitely rendered, her paintings are a call to arms demanding our acknowledgement of a higher order; our station amidst the long lost notion of collectivism.