Ash works almost full time as an anaesthetist at Kenepuru. But she has been doing art since she was a child, studied art at school, dabbled while at medical school and for the last five years has had a home studio. Art engages a different skill and way of thinking which complements her work. Ash likes to paint landscapes and birds. Her work The last witness, speaks to the last formally recorded sighting of the huia in the Tararua Ranges in 1907, and tries to balance the heavy, sad message of the loss of land and birds, with warmer and optimistic colours. Ash is currently working on painting threatened red-billed gulls. Ash is keen to find mentors for her wortk.
Ash says of her work:
“One Last Flight reflects on the huia, a bird once revered as a symbol of beauty, mana, and identity in Aotearoa. Suspended above a bucolic lower North Island landscape (former home of Huia), huia becomes both presence and absence—a final witness to a world forever altered. Extinction is not only the loss of a species, but the erosion of cultural memory, ecological knowledge, and our relationship with place. Painted in acrylic on canvas, the quiet stillness invites reflection on what has disappeared, what remains, and the responsibility we carry to ensure today’s vulnerable species do not become tomorrow’s memories.”