Bekah Ash

Bekah Ash (BA ‘02) remembers a teaching assistant critiquing her painting in a UI studio arts class.

“I had started using black outlines and the TA came around and said I shouldn’t do that,” she said.

The popular Iowa City painter, who is now known for signature black outlines in her colorful portraits, said she is thankful that she was also enrolled in art education classes when faced with the teaching assistant’s criticism.

“We learned that you don’t tell students what to do—it’s about intrinsic motivation. I listened to that instead of the TA,” she said. “I almost feel that my art education classes helped me become an artist even more so than the studio classes. They teach why we make art—that it’s more important to make art for yourself rather than for a teacher.”

Ash said her interest in art started at home. Her dad, a graphic designer, also enjoyed painting and encouraged his children to be creative.

“Even though we were pretty poor, we always had art supplies,” Ash said. “Art was something that was always there. Whenever I had free time, art was how I’d fill it.”

Now she lives in two artistic worlds: teaching and creating her own art.

Ash has been an elementary school art teacher for eight years and currently teaches at Weber Elementary in Iowa City.

Ash said she’s inspired by the way her students approach art and the world around them—especially the kindergarteners.

“They’re so creative and spontaneous. I feel like as adults, that’s something we really lose,” she said. “Kindergarteners are the freshest and so unaware of other people.”

When she’s not teaching, Ash has a successful painting career. She paints mostly fictional people in oil on canvas. She’s recently started accepting commissions and painting real people as well. She said she paints people because that’s what feels most natural to her.

“I’m big into people watching,” she said. “People have asked me if I can just do abstract and I can’t. I need that story of a person. I really have to be in touch with what I’m doing.”

Ash has displayed and sold her paintings at the Chait Galleries in downtown Iowa City for a number of years. Owner Bejamin Chait describes her as prolific and continuing to evolve. He says her work is bright, colorful, upbeat, and well received.
“People who collect her art tend to collect many pieces,” he said.

Ash said she talks with her elementary students about her life as an artist and about the possibilities for pursuing art, but she doesn’t bring her work into the classroom.

“My philosophy is the art time is about them and not so much about me sharing my art with them,” she said.
That doesn’t mean her two worlds don’t overlap.

“Everything’s connected,” she said. “The lessons I’m teaching end up coming out in my work as well. If I’m doing a lesson on Henry Matisse, all of a sudden in my own work, I start including a lot of pattern.”

Gwen Leslie, who was Ash’s practicum teacher and continues to be her mentor and friend, said she’s impressed with the way Ash balances teaching and painting.

“I’m very proud of her success in the classroom and her success as a painter,” Leslie said. “She is a brave person and not afraid to take risks in order to succeed. She is a great role model for her students.”

Ash, who is in the process of starting a small business that will feature a studio, gallery, and space for workshops and private lessons, said she feels lucky to have a career that inspires her as an artist.

“Teaching makes me a perpetual student,” she said. “Every day I get the chance to learn and grow, either from the lesson, the research I did to prepare, the things the students take away from it, or, more often, directly from the students themselves.”

Watch Bekah painting in her studio: Bekah Ash Bird Painting and Love is how it's lost not how it's found.

Photos courtesy of Todd Adamson/Adamson Studios