Kimberly Trowbridge & Ashley Johnson

Kimberly Trowbridge (Seattle), is a painter, an installation artist, a performer, and a lecturer on color theory. She received her MFA from the University of Washington (2006). Her first solo museum show at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (2021) was developed during her time as Creative Fellow at Bloedel Reserve (2018-2020), a 150-acre garden amid an old growth forest. Trowbridge recently completed a Facebook Open Arts commission (2021), and was Artist in Residence at Oxbow, Seattle. She is a two-time Neddy Award Finalist (2014, 2016), and an Artist Trust GAP Grant recipient (2014). She is the Founding Director of the Modern Color Atelier, a multi-year painting program at Gage Academy of Art, Seattle. She has led plein-air painting tours in Spain, Portugal, and Twisp, WA.

Ashley Johnson is a painter, writer, nurse, and teacher based in Bremerton, Washington. She recently graduated with her MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (2022) and is an alumnus and Co-Director of the Modern Color Atelier (2020). She is a Fred and Naomi Hazell Art Scholarship recipient through PAFA (2021), a two-time Dennis Evans and Nancy Mee scholarship recipient through Gage Academy of Art (2018, 2019), she has recently shown her work at the Fountainhead Gallery in Seattle and has been published in New American Paintings’ MFA issue (2023).

Ashley makes paintings, drawings, and collages as reenactments of bodily experiences within the forest, often depicting figures immersed and dissolving into and out of a plant, mushroom, or tree. Her work grapples with her personal losses which are connected to the slow collective loss of our forests and animals. She explores these themes through the use of color relationships which capture the connection between the painful and joyous moments of living. Ashley began her long wilderness wanderings in 2016 on the Pacific Crest Trail, walking the length of the country from the Canadian border to the Mexican border over the course of four months, an experience that remains deeply meaningful to her painting practice today.

• Website: ashleyjohnsonstudio.com
• Instagram: @ashleyjohnson_studio