Fireweed Gallery’s new exhibit, “An Alaskan Adventure,” is a series of colorful and textured paintings that showcase artist Aadya Gray’s interpretations of nature and marine life, inspired by 35 years of summers spent exploring Homer.
Showcasing whales, eagles, salmon and octopus, Gray’s paintings appear to protrude from the canvas. This relief effect is the result of a technique she developed over many years and has been using for the past 10 years, a combination of poured epoxy, clay and acrylic paint. In her painting, “Eagle Strike,” for example, a bald eagle carries a salmon in its talons and the eagle’s talons and beak and the salmon are made from a thick layer of clay.
“What I love about the clay is that that area of the painting comes at you and is the first part of the painting that you notice,” Gray said. “In Eagle Strike, you first see the salmon in the talons, then the eagle’s feathers, then the eye. The clay adds perspective and makes my paintings really feel dimensional.”
Gray also incorporates layers of texture to her work using materials from nature, like real sand combined with epoxy to make the tide line in an ocean painting stand out.
“Epoxy allows me to give textures I wouldn’t otherwise be able to attach to a painting,” she said.
Gray’s poured epoxy provides the rich and vibrant background colors that will either remain as the background on the completed piece, or be transformed into an element within the painting, like a tree. On top of the epoxy, Gray paints with acrylic paint and then, when inspired, adds clay.
Gray learned about painting with epoxy on a YouTube tutorial.
“I thought it looked like fun and was a new and exciting take on art,” she said. “I’ve been painting forever, but I always felt that my work looked flat. Incorporating epoxy allowed me to add texture and dimension and makes me feel like I’m being more creative. I never wanted to just reproduce a photograph, but more realistically depict whatever it is I’m trying to portray. I like to push the envelope with my art and this technique allows me to do so.”
Painting on acrylic board, Gray encourages viewers to touch her work. She is, in fact, planning to do an entire series of paintings in high relief, inspired by a request from a teacher of blind students.
Born and raised in Washington state and spending summers in Homer at her father Leroy’s summer house, Gray has long been inspired by the natural world of landscapes and wildlife, especially marine mammals she often witnessed while her family fished. Her paintings show fine, small details, like fish scales, eagle feathers, octopus tentacles and folds of skin near a whale’s eye. This requires her to reference detail in order to be realistic, and she often paints from photographs. For one of her whale paintings, she referenced nearly 10 different images of whales that she found online and in magazines.
Painting and drawing since she was a child, Gray was inspired and encouraged by one of her middle school teachers who taught multiple art forms throughout the school year, including carving, sculpting, painting and more.
“She chose five of the best pieces of work from each student, framed the paintings and took them to places around Seattle to be displayed, like bank lobbies, for example,” Gray said. “She helped us figure out our artistic ability and made us feel like we were real artists.”
In high school, Gray’s art won prizes and awards. As her confidence grew, she tried to think outside the box creatively.
“One time, I made a painting out of hundreds of individually painted little squares that when you put them together, showed a scene,” she said. “I learned to do that from a front page article of Time Magazine about computers. There were all these little squares that looked almost the same, but then when you kept looking at it, it was a scene of a woman in a lawn chair next to a swimming pool.”
Gray took that idea and created several of her own multi-squared paintings, winning awards across Washington State.
As an adult, Gray continued to paint, carrying a watercolor set with her everywhere she went, only taking a brief break from painting at one point during her career of buying and handling rental houses, a job she brought her creativity to.
“When I was choosing carpet, painting walls and choosing kitchen cabinetry, I felt like I was doing some of my art,” she said. “I got good at color and seeing the big picture. You have to be so optimistic to do a work of art and that’s how these houses were. They were usually pretty ugly and you had to have a vision for what they could look like.”
Now retired, Gray and her husband Thomas recently purchased her father’s summerhouse and moved to Homer in May. Now she plans to paint full time, doing so from the same place she spent all those summers painting.
“It’s incredible the amount of nature you can see just driving to the store — mountains, lupine, moose, eagles,” she said. “In a larger town or city you look at buildings and you don’t have this unobstructed view. I think it’s quite overwhelming actually. I’ve painted and sculpted these mountains over and over and over for the past 35 years as a visitor and now I can paint them as someone who calls this place home.”
Striving to showcase her fascination with nature, Gray hopes her work helps others connect to the natural world and feel inspired to preserve it.
“I think that people living in the city don’t think about an eagle or a whale, that they forget how beautiful our wildlife and our world is,” she said. “If my art can trigger something of a conservation response about the importance of us sharing this world with other creatures, that makes me happy.”
Gray creates for herself and on commission. A few years ago, she painted an octopus scene measuring six feet tall by two feet wide for a man who lives in California. That painting now resides in his house in San Diego. She is currently working on a large ocean painting for her home, incorporating a piece of plexiglass and glow lights so that when viewed, the painting will resemble an aquarium at night with the outline of the fish illuminated.
As she adapts to life in Homer, Gray plans to create a series of paintings for the sight-impaired and hopes to get her work into aquariums around the country. In the meantime, she is eager to continue showcasing her work locally as well as statewide.
“An Alaskan Adventure” includes 14 colorful and textured paintings and several prints of Gray’s landscape and marine life interpretations. This exhibit is on display at Fireweed Gallery through July 3.
Find her online at Aadyagray.com.
“First Strike,” an epoxy, paint and clay painting by Aadya Gray, completed in December 2023, is on display in her solo exhibit, “Adventures in Alaska,” at Fireweed Gallery through June 2024 in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Aadya Gray
“Salmon Den,” an epoxy, paint and clay painting by Aadya Gray is on display at Fireweed Gallery through June 2024 in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Aadya Gray
”The Octopus,” an epoxy, paint and clay painting by Aadya Gray, is a commission from February 2024. Photo provided by Aadya Gray
