Conducted by Leighton Trompisto, Poetry Editor
1. What’s your artistic perspective on the female body?
The female body is something to be celebrated, not hidden. Like I want my work to celebrate and reclaim the female body from the patriarchal gaze; rather than being an object, we should be viewed as beings in which exude power.
2. What was the first piece of art you created which made you feel like a real artist?
Probably a picture I drew years ago of an older woman. I was drawing concept art for a story I was working on (and have currently turned back to); being able to bring forth the vision of a character you’ve had in your head for weeks onto the paper is deeply satisfying.
3. What do you think has been your biggest improvement on your art over the years?
My biggest improvement is less focus on perfection and more focus on creating something that speaks to the audience in which I’m creating pieces for. There’s charm to a piece that’s only mostly perfect or not even close to perfect. I learned this when I first took up photography and the shots were almost never perfect, but the beautiful thing about nature is that regardless of whether or not something is perfect, it’s still just as breathtaking. Once I let go of the concept of perfection in my work gained way to creating art in which was more free-flowing and overall, more powerful in impact.
4. Name your top 3 social movements from any points in history.
The March on Versailles, the rise of Hip-Hop subculture in Mongolia (more specifically, when it emerged in the 90’s after Mongolia shed being a USSR satellite state), and the modern/post modern Environmentalist movement.
5. If you had the skills to do any kind of artistic rendering or anything you wanted in any medium, and do it exactly the way it looks in your mind, what would you do?
Honestly? Oil painting or sewing.
Ash Nicholson is a Pittsburgh-based nature photographer, poet, and sketch artist.
