Bio
Ashley Rabanal is originally from Atlanta, Georgia, although she spent much of her childhood and teen years living in both South Africa and Kenya. As a painter, her work focuses on interactions between the body and domestic objects as she probes topics ranging from the breakdown of the disabled body to the loss of solitude and quiet in today’s tech saturated world. In 2016, she received her Bachelor of Arts from Anderson University in South Carolina, and in 2020 she received her MFA in Visual Arts from Clemson University. She is both a 2026 SC Arts Commission project grant recipient and a 2019 grant recipient from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally. Rabanal teaches with the University of South Carolina’s Palmetto College.
Statement
The interplay between the body and domestic spaces informs my creative inquiry, although the nature of this inquiry is ever evolving. At present, my work responds to two lines of investigation: a search for stillness, silence, and clarity in a time that is fast-paced and digitized, as well as a more personal struggle to exist with my own body that is ever evolving due to chronic illness. The visual language of saturated color, stark values, and distorted bodily elements, coupled with a focus on small, mundane moments, creates meditative environments that exist in opposition to the noise and bustle our lives demand. A thread of melancholy also runs through these environments. This thread reflects both my own sense of loss as the quiet moments depicted in the paintings feel increasingly absent with the requirements of contemporary life and as I increasingly struggle to accept the reality of my failing body—a body that I find myself painting over and over.
