About Ash Godley.

Ash Godley (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Guelph, Ontario. They have recently graduated from the University of Guelph with an Honours Bachelors of Arts in Studio Art and Art History. Godley is primarily an oil painter, using a unique command of light and shadow to depict the familiar from unfamiliar perspectives. With ten years of painting experience, they have developed a keen sense of colour that allows them to put to canvas the dramatic lighting and unique distortions captured by photography.

In February 2023, Godley presented their debut solo exhibition, There is no one there! at the Zavitz Gallery at the University of Guelph. The ten paintings portrayed a variety of quotidian residential scenes, heightened by chiaroscuro and photographic effects. Many of the images were taken from the artist’s walks home from their bartending shifts late at night, where the harsh cones of streetlights would obscure sidewalks and houses, giving rise to anxious projections of potential observers. To drive home this feeling, Godley created two sculptures in opposite corners of the room, with a hat hanging from the ceiling and a pair of shoes placed beneath it, forcing the viewer to imagine two nonexistent onlookers occupying the space with them. 

Following on visual and conceptual themes from There is no one there! Godley presented a second solo exhibition entitled VISIT at Zavitz Gallery in January 2024. This series of paintings takes on the point of view of a stranger approaching a house at night. Flashlight beams and camera flash create dramatic contrast that cultivate the viewer’s anxiety in the dark, unknowable corners of the frame. Godley’s repeated late-night “visits” to the same place position their viewer as an obsessive, perhaps unwelcome guest and seek to challenge the passive act of looking.