Ashton Fairbanks LeCraw was born in Atlanta, Georgia, her father being a sixth generation Atlanta native and her mother being a city girl from New York. Her formative years were marked by geographic expressions of wonder -  a treehouse made of scrap stained glass windows, metal, and mosaicked kitchen ceramic in the backyard and a psychedelic bus in the front. Her parents collected local artworks from Howard Finster to Tony Hernandez and provided her with a glue gun at the age of 8 with instructions to, "glue anything you want to anything you want."

The inquisitive mind of a child at play developed a love for art and biology during her education at St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont where she was first exposed to the Old Master's technique of using rabbit skin glue and powdered pigments. She combined this technique with a penchant for digging through Goodwill biology textbooks to create multi-media collages. Ashton was chosen to paint the senior class gift, a portrait of a prominent professor at the Academy who had since passed.

Ashton graduated cum laude from Skidmore College in upstate New York with Departmental Honors for Fine Arts. Fostered by the school motto of "Creative Thought Matters," Ashton never lost her obsessive practices and used her developing skills in oil painting, anatomy and figure drawing to create a tertiary senior thesis for herself on the study and creation of shadow boxes. 

Following college, Ashton moved to the East Village in New York where she immersed herself in the gallery world but found her spirit limited. With a change of force, she utilized her charismatic voice and became the event producer at Neuehouse, working with Blood Orange, Erik Madigan Heck, The Wolfpack, and Prince William and Duchess Catherine’s visit to the City.

After five years in the city, she went west, craving the sun, ocean, and, like all New Yorkers, space. It was in the geographic expression of Los Angeles, where she was able to continue with her obsession of water and the female form. While there, she built her water series and a rolodex of clientele on the west coast while also apprenticing for over a year under renowned tattoo artist, Dean Berton. She transformed her hash-stroked pen work into the stippling technique of tattooing and immediately fell in love with it. After three and a half years, she returned to her southern roots in Atlanta on her way back to New York when Covid-19 hit. During most of the Pandemic, Ashton leapt at the opportunity to live in Tulum where she continued her exploration of water, the female form, and experimental underwater photography.

Ashton finally made her return back to New York in 2021.


For inquiries please email her at ashton.lecraw@gmail.com. 

Follow her on Instagram @ashtonlecraw.