Ashley Stone Home Page

Ashley Stone was born in the county of Suffolk, England. He completed a BA Hons degree at De Montfort University, Lincoln, England. He then trained as a webpage designer and continued to work with painting, exhibiting around the UK in group and solo shows. His subjects include life model, portrait and landscape paintings. His most recent works have been inspired by psychedelic music and have featured in many psychedelic venues, most notably with internationally acclaimed psychedelic trance musician Ott. In 2008, he relocated to the USA.

Artists Statement

As my work veers towards exploring more into the realms of psychedelia and other outlandish subject matters, I hope to convey in some sense other ways of thinking. That the world we live in is not as it seems, that there are forces and other dimensions that play an important role in what we do, whether that be the most simplest of things to the most complex. We can take music as an example, our brains have a response to music, but it is totally invisible to most of people visually, except in cases of synesthesia. Are our senses so refined that we can not perceive the world around us to what it really is?

From earlier on as an artist I was influenced by artists such as Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, in particular Freud. I always admired his beautiful yet very harsh portrayal of the human form. I then for a few years took on another turn in my life pursuing other interests. Then life changing experiences renewed my interest in painting and my work took a different direction strongly influenced by music and physiological ideas. This led me into new ideas that strongly changed what I wanted to convey into my work. Subjects like the near death experience and its relationship to the psychedelic experience, the symbiosis between humans and plant matter and so forth continues to influence my work more. As much to my discredit, I'm less influenced by other artists but more so by music and research into philosophy. Most noted are Terence McKenna, philosopher and ethnobotanist. Rupert Sheldrake who is an English biochemist and plant physiologist. Also reading books such as the 'dmt the spirit molecule' by Dr. Rick Strassman and 'Peopled Darkness' by J.D Arthur.