KAMA ASHLEY

I paint the people and moments I love. 

Layered, textured, mixed media,  figurative and abstract built up together until the canvas holds something alive. Athletes, florals, portraits made for someone's specific home or heart. Muhammad Ali's worn gloves. A single flower pushing through. The face of someone who matters.

I spent 32 years in classrooms before I came back to this full time, and those years are in every painting. Teaching children gave me something most artists spend a lifetime chasing, I learned to see hope in its purest form. I watched children arrive each day still soft, still open, still believing the world had something good in it. My job was to protect that. To nurture it long enough that it became a dream they could carry into their own lives.

That kind of watching changes you. It teaches you to look slowly, to find what's true underneath the surface.

That's exactly how I paint.

My process is patient by nature. I build in layers: color, line, texture, collage, and sometimes those layers need time to breathe before the next one comes. I don't rush it. A painting might sit and ask me to wait, to look again, to feel my way toward what it's trying to become. The canvas tells me when it's ready.

I've learned to listen.

Painting calms my spirit in a way nothing else does. It's where I put everything a lifetime of living has left inside me, the resilience, the grief, the joy, the gratitude. And I share it because I believe what I've felt, you've felt too. This is what I reach for, not to impress you, but to remind you that you are not alone in what you carry.

Kama

Some athletes don’t just play their sport, they change the world through it.

Top of the Game is a mixed media original series celebrating the icons who reached the pinnacle of athletic greatness not just through talent, but through resilience, sacrifice, and an unwavering commitment to something bigger than the game itself. Muhammad Ali. Jackie Robinson. Magic Johnson. Venus and Serena Williams. Kobe Bryant. Tiger Woods. Misty Copeland. Each one broke barriers, challenged injustice, and redefined what was possible, on and off the field.

At the heart of each piece is the equipment they carried .the gloves, the bat, the ball, the shoes, the pointe shoe, rendered as the focal point of rich, layered texture in mixed media. Because the tools of their craft tell the story. Worn, weighted, and full of history, they represent every early morning, every closed door, every moment of doubt overcome, and every boundary shattered.

Top of the Game is not just a celebration of athletic excellence. It is a tribute to courage, legacy, and the belief that sport can be a vehicle for change. These are the originals, in every sense of the word.