Ashley Longshore

Note: Art world darling Ashley Longshore is a self-taught artist who has redefined Pop Art for a new generation through her strong feminist perspective. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Longshore attended Brenau Academy in Gainesville, Georgia and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from the University of Montana in Missoula. She began creating art early in life, discovering a true passion for painting while in college. Her career has skyrocketed over the last decade, with the artist making her first million in 2013. Longshore has created a body of work that challenges traditional modes of thought and an artist-based entrepreneurial business model that has led to an empire and multiple crossovers into fashion. With a bold and colorful palette mirroring the personality of the artist herself, Longshore enjoys exploring “American ambition from a female perspective.” Her canvases are packed to excess with vibrant, borderline brash imagery of pop culture often paired with eyebrow-raising phrases. Her resulting oeuvre is cheeky, whimsical, over the top and serves as an homage to American capitalism through the eyes of a female Pop Artist.

Ref.: MacCash, Doug. “A Pop Artist Who’s Not Always Popular, Brash and Energetic Ashley Longshore ‘ain’t no quitter.’” Times Picayune. Sept. 23, 2022. www.nola.com. Accessed Mar. 1, 2023; Studeman, Kristin Tice. “Meet Blake Lively’s Bestie and New Orleans’ Most Badass Artist, Ashley Longshore.” ELLE. Oct. 11, 2017. www.elle.com. Accessed Mar. 1, 2023.

Note: Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Kayla Mahaffey took the struggle in the world around her and the support from her community to evolve a unique and personal style that imbues her work with imagination, whimsy, positivity and the narrative of her own life story. Her works are best described as a mixture of pop art and Afro-surrealism and based around her childhood memories and the safety and comfort she felt in her younger years, particularly while watching cartoons. Mahaffey’s works have a depth of meaning and universal appeal that have led to her recent meteoric rise within the art world.

In the skilled hands of Mahaffey, popular culture imagery is re-purposed and re-invented. By combining immediately recognizable cartoon elements with images of Black children, she succeeds in carving out space for them, and herself, within the imaginative chaos. Her work is saturated in bubble gum and cotton candy colors and invites the viewer into the artist’s world, which is as sentimental and whimsical as it is deeply powerful. Ref.: Scott, Chadd. “Kayla Mahaffey Explores Nostalgia in New Paintings.” See Great Art. Sept. 17, 2021. www.seegreatart.art. Accessed Mar. 1, 2023; “Interview with Kayla Mahaffey for ‘Remember the Time.’” Sour Harvest. Sept. 21, 2021. www.sourharvest.com. Accessed Mar. 1, 2023; Mahaffey, Kayla. “About.” Kayla May. www.kaylamay.art. Accessed Mar. 1, 2023.

Kayla Mahaffey

[$500/700]

Provenance: Galerie Simonne Stern, New Orleans, LA; Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Note: Melody Guichet received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Louisiana State University and her Master of Fine Arts from Temple University in Philadelphia. She returned to LSU as a faculty member, bringing with her a unique and collaborative approach to teaching. For example, she has enlisted the physics department to work with her students and assist them in painting their own interpretations of modern quantum physics. Guichet has received numerous awards for her teaching, and her own work has been represented by Galerie Simonne Stern and Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans.

[$700/1000]