Ashleigh Pedersen

ASHLEIGH PEDERSEN
“OTHER REALMS”

NOVEMBER 18 VIRTUAL EXHIBITION AND ARTIST TALK

ARTIST STATEMENT

Other Realms

One night in March of 2020, I wandered up to the corner convenient store after dark to buy a bottle of wine. Days prior—just as Austin, Texas slid steeply into pandemic lockdown—I’d been diagnosed with an aggressive and fairly advanced breast cancer. Miles of daily walks and plenty of evening wine were two of many ways I was processing the infinite layers of emotion in response to my newfound reality. 

That day in particular, I’d felt overwhelmed and depressed. Only eight weeks ago, at the start of the new year, I’d turned 37. I’d been feeling youthful, motivated, and energized. I’d already acted in a month-long run of a play; I’d at last finished my novel and was actively pitching it to agents; and just before Covid hit the U.S., I’d made a resolution to throw more parties. But in sifting through the myriad layers of emotion in response to this cancer diagnosis, I’d stumbled upon the horrifying realization that I could die. And just beneath that was the even more dismaying discovery that eventually, cancer or no, I would die. 

I walked to the convenient store that night full of grief. I looked up at the tree branches against the nighttime sky, seeking comfort in their beauty and perspective. Then, seemingly and perhaps very fittingly out of nowhere, a weird sensation came over me. I felt, quite distinctly, that I could reach out my hands, and they would pierce through this world and straight into another realm. It was as though the nothingness of air itself was a softly textured membrane concealing something tangible, but just out of sight. 

This felt tremendously soothing. “I’m just a traveler,” I thought with relief. Earth was one stopping point. There would be more.

Whether this was early onset pandemic insanity or a very real spiritual insight, this feeling did not leave me as I embarked on what will eventually be over a year of cancer treatments, including six brutal rounds of chemotherapy, a difficult surgery, radiation, and more. I was and remain determined to keep living, but the gift of that nighttime walk was to do so without—for the most part—fear of death. 

“Other Realms,” an ongoing series of landscapes, began during and is inextricably connected to my experience of both cancer and the global pandemic (new realms in and of themselves). Although the paintings are based on iPhone photos taken in the rural Adirondacks and my home state of Virginia, my imagination at some point took over and the subject matter transformed into something new and surprising. Rather than replications of reality, these landscapes seem to be glimpses into worlds adjacent to our own—worlds we can almost, but not quite, reach out and touch.

ARTISTS BIO

Instagram: @ashbellart

Ashleigh Pedersen is a writer, actor, painter, and teacher. She is the founder of Write Well Austin, a small private tutoring business, and has nearly 15 years of experience teaching writing to students of all ages. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, where she held a teaching fellowship from 2006-2009 and won the Turow-Kinder prize for fiction. 

Ashleigh's writing has been featured in New Stories from the South, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Places, the New York Public Library’s lending app Library Simplified, and shortlisted for Best American Short Stories, Fractured 2020 Flash Fiction Contest, and a Pushcart Prize. Most recently, she completed her first novel, and her short story "Crocodile"—based on the first chapter of her novel—won The Masters Review 2020 Flash Fiction Contest. Her writing is represented by Jon Curzon at Artellus Ltd. Ashleigh also regularly pursues theater and film work, and has performed with the Wimberley Players, the Gaslight-Baker Theater, Different Stages, and Frontera Fest's "Best of the Week," among others. When not focused on her novel and plays these last few years, Ashleigh began teaching herself to paint portraits and landscapes. Her training has consisted of pestering artist friends via text for tips and informal critiques, and regularly studying paintings online in her spare time.