Growing up in the Rocky Mountains of Utah and Montana, the Continental Divide of East and West, I had contradiction within myself at birth. As I grew and grappled with the pressures and moldings of society that were different from my truth, going to the mountains and climbing trees was my refuge. Those tall, textured, layered features of earth reflected my soul back to me when I seemed to forget my true self.

 

I started painting when I was twenty, learning from Professor Zhimin Guan at Minnesota State University Moorhead. During those courses, I also learned how to chop and join wood to make stretcher bars for canvases, how to stretch raw canvas and prime it, and how to finish compositions professionally. At the time I was so afraid of who I truly was, I dove headfirst into a cult that instructed me to give up everything else in order to have safety and eternal life. I did give up everything, literally, except painting (secretly). I had extreme insomnia from inner turmoil, but the rich colors and depth of texture in oil painting kept those enduring mountains in me alive in the frozen plains of those Fargo/Moorhead nights.

 

At twenty-three years old, I moved to Portland, Oregon and was finally able to be honest enough with myself and society and let my true form take shape. That is when I started going by the name Aesch (pronounced "ash"), because I burned down the former version of me that was fearful and conforming in order to allow the true courageous, queer, ignited version of myself to grow from the ashes. 

 

Through various jobs and connections in Portland, I bike commuted to reclaim wood offcuts (that were otherwise being trashed) and upcycled them into canvases and functional furniture pieces including butcher blocks, jewelry holders, candle holders, and tables, etc. The reclamation aspect is important to my work, as I try to maintain a sustainable, low-carbon footprint lifestyle. The live edge of the wood offcuts and the wilderness they came from, which I so dearly love to paint, is why I call this Wild Edge Works.

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Each piece of work is a journal entry of moments in my life, and every series captures the story from different growth periods I went through. My early work (2011 to 2017, spanning "the cult years"  in Fargo/Moorhead to "the coming out years" in Portland) portrays explosions of color and texture, like lava coming out of a mountain when earth can't contain it anymore. These works abstractly express my passionate and eager search for identity, a sense of belonging, and reciprocated love. During this part of my life, I experienced periods of having maelstroms of emotions that stormed inside me and I did not have support at the time to learn how to handle them, to the point where I would undergo emotional blackouts. The more I honed my painting craft, the more I could control my emotions; they seemed to be left there on the canvas instead of pent up inside me. This is when I started to grasp that faith and spirituality could exist outside of the conventional walls I dreaded and rather within me, in studios, in basements, in the light of the windows...

 

The more recent works (2018 to present) reflect the growth and settling into my true form. During many wanderings in volcanic wildernesses and calderas of the Pacific Northwest, I've come to see these works as that moment when lava meets lake and forms obsidian. In my late twenties I began intense studies of obsidian pieces while on hikes. I was drawn to a particular shard of obsidian in which I seemed to be able to see my ancestors and the meaning in my form within the shape, so I have been painting it over and over for years. The shape has been pushed and pulled in my paintings and has manifested the mountain ranges, young and old faces, female body forms, and horse faces I know from my life.

 

Living in the Midwest again, in Duluth for a spell, and now in Minneapolis, Minnesota in my thirties as the truest, best version of myself, I embrace and explore the younger versions of me who were so afraid and am allowing them to push, pull and grow into different forms as I explore the plains again. Lately I have been exploring agate forms within mountain ranges, combining what I've known with what I am learning now. Moving forward, I will continue to be open to the elements and people I encounter in my wanderings, allowing them to help me explore my inner truths and express them in oil paintings as journal entries depicting the stories of my life.

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You can take the kid out of the mountains, but you can't take the mountains out of the kid.