Ashley Wood: Artist

Ashley Wood: Artist

Written by craig coffman

Ashley Wood. Ahhhh. His artwork is sublimely beautiful. The rich, textured backgrounds and stark color palette. I adore his over-emphasized limbs. His army of long, lean, and lanky (alliteration) characters are just elegant and mesmerizing. I recently looked back through my copies of Popbot and lazily drifted to the realm of robots and dangerous females. Not to mention some surreal 'stories' and a decent showing of cats. He has a definite style comprised of traditional painting techniques, coupled with digital photography and graphic software. The synthesis of these approaches is nothing short of breath taking.

I met Ashley a few years back (ComicCon 2001) and spoke to him at length. Just started out as a compliment to his work, and ended up talking about tattoos, kids, and 4AD. He was extremely friendly and interesting. He took time with everyone coming to his booth and still returned to talk to me. I found that nice that he seemed to take a genuine interest in our conversation. Now, I am not implying he and I are chums and we talk frequently (I have not even sent him an email in over 4 years, and even then I only sent perhaps 2), but he came across very genuine.

If you are unfamiliar with his work, I would suggest visiting his site. His site is quite impressive anyway, and worth a look on that merit alone. He has links to purchase his works from his site and a gallery to whet your appetite. If you are a fan of art which is spooky, dark, sci-fi, erotic (but very tasteful), and mixed-media you really ought to check him out. He has done work for Dreamworks SKG, Warner Bros., Random House, Marvel Comics, McFarlane Entertainment, IDW, and Konami. He definitely is a professional artist and demonstrates that you do not have to be 'traditional' to make it in with some of the industry heavies.