KAMA ASHLEY

I have always been an artist.

As a child I took art classes, studied through my formative years, and declared it as my major in college, because making art was simply who I was. But life, as it does, asked something else of me first. I spent 32 years in the classroom, teaching elementary school children everything from reading to mathematics, and closing that chapter as a high school art teacher. I poured myself into young people, into their growth, their curiosity, their becoming. I don’t regret a single day of it. Those years gave me patience, observation, and a profound understanding of what it means to be human: to wonder, to struggle, to persist, to reach for beauty anyway.

I am not starting over, I am going deeper.

I create layered mixed media paintings that blend figurative and abstract forms, acrylic collage, and rich texture. I paint the people I love. The moments I want to hold onto. The emotions I haven‘t yet found the words for. I paint iconic athletes, quiet florals, and pieces made specifically for someone’s home or heart. Every piece begins with something real: an observation, a feeling, a memory that won’t let me go.

 I build up layers through color, line, and texture, letting movement and feeling guide the composition. Whether I‘m painting the worn gloves of Muhammad Ali or the quiet strength of a flower in bloom, I work until the canvas holds something alive, something that pulls you in.

Painting calms my spirit, it gives me the freedom to express everything a lifetime  of living has left inside me: the resilience, the grief, the joy, the love. And in expressing it, I hope to reach you. To show you what lives inside my mind, and to remind you that you are not alone in what you feel.

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.