Local artist creates a world of her own.
Great art often has a quality that transcends. It's an escape to another world. In the case of Ramsey Ayers that world is a place she has painstakingly created in her own mind and translated for a dozen years.
"When I graduated from college and started painting on my own [withou=t teachers, instruction or direction], the first thing I started painting were these tribal-like people in this make-believe island landscape," Ayers says.
She calls their home Juniper Island and in that place little matters outside of simplicity and nature, family and friends.
"It's my version of Utopia," she adds.
It's a Utopia that reminds her to slow down and appreciate what's around her. Slowing down, however, doesn't mean she hasn't changed. She has not grown tired of her Juniper Island, but her methods are evolving with time. Her work is most simply described as mixed media. One look at Ayers' pieces and you see that's a rudimentary label.
"If I could call them old maps and collaged handmade papers, hand sewn beads and twigs, gold-leafed, wood-blocked, acrylic painted pieces,' I would," she says. "My work is a mix of rustic colors, textured fabrics with a bit of ethnic folk art feel."
