HI, I'M ASHLEY.
I believe that paint is a conduit for touch in a digital world.
I'm a painter, sometimes on fabric, sometimes on walls!
​
You can find me listening to true crime podcasts, on a ladder, vigorously applying more sunscreen (they don't call Florida the sunshine state for nothing!), ferrying my 5 y/o to and from her extracurriculars, and at least 1-3 sports teams in the Tampa Bay area.
​
I don't buy into the starving artist ethos and preach passionately about living creatively, with purpose.
​
I love to learn about EVERYTHING (enneagram 5), and am happiest when I eat a peanut butter waffle each morning.
​
Nice to meet you!!
​
​
​
​
Ashley Cassens is an Artist and Educator who believes that paint is a conduit for touch in a digital world.
Ashley is a native Floridian who earned her BFA from Florida Southern College in 2006 practicing classical figure painting methods. She later earned an MFA from Florida Atlantic University in 2017, where she received a full Graduate Teaching Assistantship.
She has been awarded the Provost Fellowship, two Graduate Advisory Board Grants, a Friedland Grant, a Rothenberger Scholarship, an Ambassador of the Arts Scholarship, was twice awarded a Women in the Visual Arts Scholarship, and a Innovative Art Grant, 1st National Bank of Pasco Grant and the South Pasadena Grant from Creative Pinellas.
She has exhibited her work at the ARC Gallery in Chicago, The Cornell Museum in Delray Beach, the Box Gallery in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. Ashley has studied in workshops with pop artist Julian Schnabel and prestigious figurative painter, Steven Assael.
Passionate about education, she interned at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL in 2016. That experience encouraged her to accept a K-5 Art teaching position where she taught for 5 years. Despite leaving public education, Ashley continues to teach adults how to paint realistically in her online course Let’s Get Real.
Ashley developed a signature portrait style combining retro-patterned fabric with highly realistic figures. That work has since been licensed by Home Goods. This method of painting informs her approach to her favorite mural subject, flora and fauna.
​
In 2022, she quit teaching full-time to paint murals. Her murals are inspired by the process of oil painting and the color palette of her home state, Florida. She is regularly booked by both private and commercial clients in and around the Tampa Bay area. She has since painted 62 murals, including: schools, non-profits, national corporations, and prominent design firms and private residences.
Eager to serve her community, Ashley has been featured on TV for her artwork with Daytime, News Channel 8, and Fox 13 Tampa Bay. Her work has been in print in Creative Loafing and HAVEN Magazine. As a multi-passionate creative,, she has hand-painted the illustrations in the children's book Down in the Pasture and authored her own journal Painting Possibilities. She is passionate about debunking the starving artist myth and was featured on the art and business podcasts, Colour Me Happy and The Artist Academy Podcast.