This is a new 2023 painting series inspired by the James Webb Telescope images and created in memory of my dad, Mike Baldwin.
Throughout my childhood, my dad and I watched countless space shuttle launches together, and many nights, he pointed out different stars and constellations to me from our front porch. He spoke about astronauts, the space station, Hubble telescope photos, and just all things space with me, and really to anyone who would listen. He was fascinated by space, and over the years, I grew to love it too.
A few months after my dad died in 2022, NASA released its first photos from its new telescope (the James Webb Space Telescope), and I could just imagine how excited he would have been to see them. I could hear him in my mind saying “Ashley, have you seen these new photos of space? They’re just so coooool!” I knew he would have been sharing them online and telling everyone to “teach kids about space,” which is something he was passionate about too.
From the moment I saw the images, I couldn’t stop talking about them. Then one night, after a particularly lengthy conversation about them at a party, one of my friends asked, “why don’t you paint them?” And I replied, “because the photos are already perfect. I can’t paint them any better than they already are,” and without missing a beat, he said, “but that’s not the point of your art though… you paint how things feel. Why don’t you paint how space feels?” And in that moment, everything just clicked into place for me. I started dreaming of bringing these photographs to life with thick, touchable textures, beautiful metallic details, and deep emotional inspiration carefully tucked into every layer of paint.
A few months later I completed the first painting in the series, “Birth of a Star” which I painted for what would have been my dad’s birthday. This painting is based off of a photo of the Carina Nebula that features a star nursery where stars are actively being born in huge thick clouds of dust.
A few weeks after that I finished the second painting in the series, which is “Death of a Star,” It was released on the anniversary of my dad’s death. It depicts a star slowly releasing clouds of dust as it dies.
The third painting in the series was finished for my first Father’s Day without my dad, the purple spiral galaxy. Purple was his favorite color, and that is why all of these are titled, dated, signed, and dedicated to my dad on the back in purple paint.
