10 Questions with Brett Ashby
Brett Ashby is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, presenter, and author from Naarm, Australia. Ashby’s art practice includes sculpture, performance, installation, painting, music, and major public commissions, framing Ashby as a prodigious figure in the contemporary art world.
Ashby is recognisable for his unique methods of practice employing a skateboard or surfboard as a tool to paint aura. His work is linked through a poetic and intuitive sensitivity to the expressive potential of space, light, colour, context, and materials.
Ashby is the Director of the short film ‘The One I Love’, which received Best Short Film awards in 2023 from countries such as Italy, Switzerland, Serbia, and Russia and was awarded Best Inspirational Film at the 8 & Halfilm Awards.
Capturing the vibrations and energy within the time and space he is creating in, the colours in his art align with positive psychology, art therapy, and faith and offer healing properties.
His work is in various collections worldwide, including Berlin, Texas, Cape Town, Edinburgh, Geneva, Sri Lanka, London, Paris, New York, Miami, Tokyo, Dubai, Tennessee, and many parts of Australasia.
Brett Ashby - Portrait | Credit Wayne Svrakov
ARTIST STATEMENT
“I am an international contemporary, public, and performance artist. Art has been my voice since I can remember. Better said, eternal by seeing the internal originating from eternity, to promote spiritual transformation in the area of Synchronicity both individually and system-wide. Working towards a goal, I draw on experiences as an artist and as a patient.” - Brett Ashby
Truth, Self, and Evolution for humanity
Contemporary mixed media artworks by Ashby explore frequency, energy, and geometry. Ashby's public murals capture and communicate the internal voice of his pupils captured through community workshops. Performance action painting by Ashby is a spiritual process of striking the brush when encountering that moment of metamorphosing, like a pendulum while skateboarding.
These works harmonize the mind, body, and soul to activate the inner creative in all, Oneness.
Bondi Life, HD video, Oil and van sculpture, 2014 © Brett Ashby
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INTERVIEW
First of all, tell us a little more about yourself and how did you begin making art?
I have always been creative, and I painted from a very young age, with my first framed work exhibited in my Principles office during Primary school, class 1. However, it wasn't until 2006 that I focused my intention on making art professionally for public viewing. It became a means for me to communicate my deeper connection with all things, understanding through seeing. Who is Brett Ashby, Who are you, And what is the Universe! Well, that is what we all want to understand. I am You, and You Are Me. It's Oneness. I find grace in the fact that in understanding oneness, consciousness continues to evolve, heal and transform in each and every moment. I couldn't need more peace than now, and the World needs it right now, help us to bring gentleness and ease through art, point us to the goodness within and through us by shining your light. My recent practice sees me creating form from seeing aura energy fields through action painting and flow state studies. It's incredible, and I'm truly grateful.
You started your career in Melbourne, Australia, but also studied in London. How did these two experiences influence your work?
Very much so, during my studies, it helped me understand the chaos and complexity of trauma. Living in central London informs your external environment. During this time, I created my signature style of photographic collage, illustrated narratives in the face of victims, representing traumatized iconic places, spaces, or in the form of a portrait, in 2006. As an Australian from a small town, art isn't really appreciated like it is in Europe and England, so I made it my mission to visit every gallery. The art of the World became my studies; I'd ask the question, what has man done to the land, materialistic desire over and above conscious living. During this time, I lived on campus at the Queens College of Fine Arts, Westminster, alongside fashion designers, film directors, musicians, and artists. In hindsight, it really was a bustling pot of energy, like-minded youth. I made many connections, and the experiences informed my work forever, making me return to reside in London from 2010-to 2013, exhibiting and travelling Worldwide with my art ever since. Being abroad, I lost my sense of Country, my grounding. I believe when you listen to your inner calling that voice guides you far more than the illusion.
Understanding life and death, Acrylic on canvas, 540x120 cm, 2022 - Installation view at Cube Art Fair © Brett Ashby
You work with several different mediums. Which one is your favorite or the one you find easier to work with?
Creating form/matter as art has various outcomes. I take the path with less obstructions. The mediums I've worked with are responsive to my studio, place, and space that I have had to create from. The human entity must be open to the cosmic flow allowing the narrative to create form. The medium becomes the form in terms of where the artist is positioned in consciousness. I have been heavily involved in digital art, consumed by technology, and almost killed by it (Cancer survivor). To be honest, my works, which I create outside and without any technology, are my happy medium. It has taken many years for me to paint the human auras which I can see. I was blinded by the system telling us what we can and can't see and what is true or fake. My art is spiritual, and once I understood this, it became crystal clear that this would be my favourite medium. I call it mindless painting, because if someone uses their mind, they're just projecting.
Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What aspect of your work do you pay particular attention to?
I focus on openness, where and how my energetic field is being used in my present moment. I pay respect to the place and space and apply gentleness to the outwardness while the artwork is taking shape. The art is painted through me in multiple dimensions for both the living and the dead. I focus all my attention on the fact that the light shared through the artwork is for human evolution and consciousness. My art has a vibrant colour style, a heightened sense of energy, a colour frequency that I can see, and a pixel formation almost like rain. I believe this has a connection with the Universe, the higher self-representing chakra points and energetic fields found in the waking life - a sense of contentment in the unknown and that the human being has all it needs while walking on the land.
Mania, Acrylic on canvas, 180x180 cm, 2019 © Brett Ashby
Where do you find inspiration for your work?
I create from life, connections, and dream states. As I mentioned, I'm very active in studying traditional artworks found in museums, attending contemporary art fairs, and being heavily involved in the music scene. Doing this allows me to explore and absorb past, present, and future in every moment, channeling from deeper states of meditation, realms, and dimensions to articulate the visions I receive and manifest them into geometry and form. The form can come in poems, paintings, films, or performances. The mediums and visions inform the artworks which I must create before I lose sight of that vision. Life is beautiful, that's all the inspiration I need.
How much planning goes into each artwork?
I set an intention for what is to be created, and again I'm erecting a vision that I've experienced in an altered state of consciousness. The planning is from experience, living in the present is the planning, being aware of your surroundings, patterns, and numbers. When I was younger, I didn't always create the art directly, so I had my thoughts, which I documented in my journals and diaries. I find the outcome of a piece merely a result of one's journey, a celebration for showing up and letting go. Everything is sound, energy, and frequency, so our thinking, actions, and the spoken word manifest into the final piece. To respond to the question more directly, artworks can take years. I believe time doesn't exist, from dream to journal entry, the work of art comes only in time. The artwork cannot be completed until the artist is ready, aligned, evolved, and able to receive the energy exchange and release from making the artwork. Planning is based on flow, what is felt within becomes a journey towards creating the work. Yes, I do lots of planning when I create to get to that moment of synchronicity in which the work is completed.
Public Art, Cube Square, 2017 © Brett Ashby
Yell At Me and I’ll Do It, acrylic on canvas, 120x150 cm, 2021 © Brett Ashby
Do you have a role model that you've drawn inspiration from when creating your art?
You may be born a genius or not it comes down to your life path, numbers, and birth name. Understanding how to use your power is the inspiration. I was always attracted to the originals by Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, both self-titled geniuses; I say they found God. I appreciate the work of Ye (Kayne West), Michael Jackson (Faith), Sia (Trauma), Jeff Koons (Mirroring), and James Turrell (Light). I feel we are on the same vibration and understanding through seeing. We are what we hear in our external but once released, finding the inner New York, we live within clarity.
What are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future? Anything exciting you can tell us about?
I have just returned from New York, where I exhibited in the World's largest public art fair during Frieze art week. The performance artwork exclusively for Cube Art Fair, Times Square, was titled: Understanding Life & Death, which was a site responsive in regards to human living environments, the complexity of self-harm and inner expression through a whale's blowhole. The work depicts a fossil, aura healing of a Blue whale totem across three canvases 6x1.2 m. The work of art was an HD video of 2-minute performance installation across seven billboards screening vertically at 32 stories high at 1551 Broadway, Times Square. It was my gift to the public, a voice from the land, a calling, healing, a quantum vibration, painted at a macro level while surfing a kayak on the ocean on Bunurong Country- stolen land, in Phillip Island, Australia. The work takes charge of one's own life, to do things your own way, and make positive life changes to benefit and enhance yourself and those around you. The other artwork I showed was titled: "Mindful Running" this performance video art showed across 100 billboards throughout downtown New York. The work explores running for 40hrs in one spot, using sacred sounds, and practising mindfulness. Without the mind, one can travel, finding that place of inner peace, that childlike calmness. While running, I projected past photography I captured when travelling across Outback Australia. This light show represents letting go and healing through colour therapy. "Mindful Running" is taken from Ashby's video installation series titled: $100M run, practising mindfulness while running can make you more aware of your body, breathe, and surroundings and potentially help you to achieve a state of flow or total immersion.
My current attention is on the release of my first book titled: "Yell At Me And I'll Do It", published Worldwide June, 2022 on Amazon Books, as part of the "Uncontrollable Series" documenting my 12-year cycle through painting in the public art sphere.
Times Square Billboards, Cube Art Fair, New York, 2022 © Brett Ashby
You recently approached NFTs. What are your thoughts on this subject?
Yes, the NFT is very similar to the digital artists around 2000 and the work I spoke of earlier 'Ashby style' digital collage 2006 onwards. The artists I was with and around these times could see this coming. It's a manifestation of animated screens, digital tech, domains and apps, screen time progression, and as humans become even further disconnected from the soul and addicted to blue light. I'm not yet convinced of the safety or eco-friendly process of minting, but I notice that the digital wallet and online trading environment, that sense of freedom, will soon become our reality. It's all part of the universal shift occurring at the moment on Earth. The world has been transforming due to cardinal energy since August 2021, please understand Pluto's energy, and it will continue. What was within the land must return to the land. Man is his own destruction, and man will soon need to rebuild and seed to flower.
And finally, how do you see your art evolving in the next five years?
I must be fair and true to others; I'm involved in writing songs and inspiring others and can only hope the expanding energy forms a better me and a better you. I have several commissions for famous musician aura portraits to be painted while skateboarding. I'm making space for these. The latest circle canvas series 'Ripples Of Love' femininity of inner love, from the heart space and 'God' sacred steel geometry forming a 10m rock circle for emotional therapy release, are getting noticed by my collectors. The human entity has power and the ability to choose its own destiny and achieve anything you want in life, and this excites me.
