Using oils, glass, and canvas to explore the subtleties in color and Black skin, ashley martin portrays movement through texture, structure, and hue. Her work reflects a deep understanding of the human experience, a journey full of triumph, struggle, hope, and grief. Her most recent works have been a tribute to Black womanness, form, and vulnerability of self. In her work, she depicts Black women's bodies, capturing the diversity of their unique structure, individuality, and gravity.  In all, ashley dissects the complexity of the human form, conveying its nuanced beauty and lyrical nature in curves and colors.

ashley completed three series in 2021, Bodies in Space, On the Couch, and Finding Home — all of which center nakedness, documentation, and vulnerability. She started Bodies in Space to ease her anxiety during the Covid-19 pandemic. The monochromatic studies of women's bodies serve to celebrate parts of women’s bodies that are often shamed. She finds immense pleasure in painting back fat and hanging stomachs. Similarly, her series, On the Couch, is a mediation of spatiality, Black bodies, and ease within the present. The series depicts select Black women sitting and comfortably taking up space with their being — a celebration of Black womens’ softness and vulnerability. Each of the pieces are products of multi-hour live painting sessions on paper. ashley’s ongoing series, Finding Home, was started after the death of her father in 2021 as an ode to home, memory, and longing for what used to be. Finding Home features self-portraits in various homes and spaces that she has occupied while searching for home, security, and clarity. 

While many see Blackness as the absence of color, it requires an abundance of color to create Black and brown skin. ashley’s art is not only a celebration of Blackness but a tool used to shift the consciousness of those that engage in it. ashley’s work is centered around freedom and finding ease through our minds in the way that we exist in life. As a Black artist, ashley uses her work to express the need for freedom, both from her thoughts and present day society.

By sharing her process and finished pieces alike, ashley hopes people will find home in her paintings, and hopes to encourage body positivity and radical self-care. Through her work, she hopes to facilitate space for others to heal, explore, and exist as their most authentic selves.