L.V. Eberhard Center Wall Gallery, Robert C. Pew Grand Rapids Campus
November 5, 2021 - March 4, 2022

Kirkhof Center Wall Gallery, Allendale Campus
November 4, 2022 - March 17, 2023

Stewart Ashlee was born in Detroit in 1929, and he spent summers at his grandparents’ cottage in Ontario. Throughout his childhood, Ashlee read adventure stories illustrated by N. C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle, among others. These stories and the vibrant illustrations fostered his equally vivid imagination, something he embraced in his artwork throughout his career. While in grade school he was chosen to attend free Saturday morning art classes at the Detroit Institute of Arts, but most of his formal training was received later at Wayne University in Detroit. Although he would spend his early adult life in other occupations, he always found time to pursue his first love, painting. In 1974 Ashlee moved to northern Michigan and made it his full-time career until he died in 2000.

In 2020, the Grand Valley State University Art Gallery received a collection of Stewart Ashlee’s paintings, drawings, prints, sketchbooks, and photographs from his family. At the heart of this collection is a unique group of over 800 Polaroid photographs, the majority of which are self-portraits of the artist and images of close friends and family members. Ashlee took these photographs at his home and studio in northern Michigan, where he staged himself and others in various poses and outfits. Preserved in binders and boxes as a go-to reference for the human figure, Ashlee used these as components for scenes he would eventually realize in paint.

Ashlee was initially drawn to landscapes early in his career but increasingly became known for his depictions of the human figure in social settings and intimate moments. This exhibition, which draws primarily on this figurative work, examines Ashlee’s underlying artistic process by pairing paintings with sketches and photographs that clearly illustrate the development of the work. At the heart of his process was Ashlee’s ability to embrace drawing and photography as tools to create and capture elements for scenes he dreamed up. Examined alongside his paintings these methods offer unique insight into and documentation of the artist, his artistic process, and personal relationships.

Stewart Ashlee served as the model for the man playing the trumpet and the man playing the piano in this painting. As he developed the scene, he selected the trumpet player as the central character of the final composition and took many photographs of himself in slightly different positions, with different hats, and on different chairs to get just the right pose.

Stewart Ashlee’s vivid childhood imagination is on full display in this imagined Western bar scene where three cowboys play cards. In the Polaroid photographs, he poses as different characters and even includes his father Stewart Davis Ashlee as a model in the bottom left. His father also appears in one of his sketches as he continued to work out the mechanics of the scene. Even the woodburning stove in his home studio is included in the final painting.

Location

November 4, 2022 - March 17, 2023

Kirkhof Wall Gallery
Kirkhof Center, Allendale Campus
1 Campus Drive
Allendale, MI 49401

For directions and parking information visit www.gvsu.edu/maps.

Contact

For special accommodation, please call:
(616) 331-3638

For exhibition details and media inquires, please email:
Joel Zwart, Curator of Exhibitions
[email protected]

For learning and engagement opportunities, please email [email protected].