Ashley Cole is a Los Angeles–based abstract artist born in Compton, California, and raised in the shadow of the Watts Towers. Her early exposure to her uncle’s colored-pencil drawings and the graffiti of her surroundings fostered a lasting interest in visual language, gesture, and transformation. After formally studying fashion design at Brooks College in Long Beach, Cole transitioned to painting, bringing an enduring sensitivity to material, construction, and the body into her fine art practice.

Working with large-scale canvases that often drape, fold, and extend into space, Cole explores the body as a site of memory, tension, and becoming. Her process draws from the improvisational structures of jazz, the visual language of graffiti, and the material histories embedded in skin, landscape, and lived experience. Through layered mark-making, cuts, stitching, and tactile interventions, her paintings hold traces of personal and collective memory. Rather than seeking resolution, Cole’s work remains open, embracing instability, transformation, and the possibilities of repair.

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