Ashley Irizarry is a photographer, painter and mixed media artist whose creative endeavors center around her sensitivity and mental health struggles.

Her lively abstract paintings utilize vibrant, intense colors and dense visual textures to convey the sensory and emotional overwhelm she experiences in the world. She felt out-of-place growing up and living in South Florida, a place where people flock to retire, relax, and escape.

“I never felt at home here” Ashley Irizarry says about Florida, “in this atmosphere of careless fun and sunshine, my desire for quiet reflection and emotional sensitivity to the traumas of the world felt antithetical to my environment. It was a smile pasted over rain clouds.”

She carries this sentiment over into her paintings, contrasting the softness of organic shapes with intense color palettes and visual textures that highlight the pain and melancholy suffusing the sunshine.