Art's the way Ashleigh Gardner likes it

While the world is taking to social media to show their culinary skills during the COVID-19 lockdown, Ashleigh Gardner, the Australian allrounder, has taken up art as a new hobby and has had people drooling over her creations. She has turned to the Indigenous style of dot painting and has gifted her pieces of work to the likes of Mel Jones, Moises Henriques and Nicole Bolton among others.



I said to my mum that going into lockdown I'm going to need a hobby to do because I know how bored I get easily and I thought why not painting,” said Gardner, who is working on a piece for Alyssa Healy, which will take 10 hours to finish. “Having an Aboriginal background I have a connection with that and people have said while I'm not a natural artist it is in my blood. It's pretty cool that people even like my work to be honest.”

 

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I am by no means an artist, but I was pretty stoked with what I created for @mozzie21 🎨

A post shared by Ashleigh Gardner (@ashleigh_gardner97) on Mar 26, 2020 at 7:22pm PDT

“When I first started doing it I didn't think anything was going to come out of it, I just did a little piece and put it on social media and it got a little bit of traction which was quite funny because I'm nowhere near being an artist. I did a piece for Moises Henriques and when I posted that I had a lot of people asking for pieces and it blew me away, people actually wanting my work.”



The biggest praise, admittedly, that Gardner got was from an artist next door, who told her he got goosebumps seeing her work. What’s more, he gave her a bat and asked her to create one of her pieces for him on that.



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While Gardner doesn’t like uncertainty in her life, the painting has enabled her to pass her time constructively.



“It's almost like a therapeutic thing,” she said. “It's so different to my normal life which is why I think I've enjoyed it. For so long I've had a schedule and been told what to do day-to-day and this is something I can do off my own back. It's quite relaxing, you need to concentrate to make sure you don't ruin it but I put some music on and get painting.”