The whimsical, surreal oil paintings of Thomas Ascott use the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee as a backdrop, where the artist himself was raised. This creates a highly personal aspect to these works, part of a new show at Arch Enemy Arts titled “The Astral Woods.”
“Inspiration, for me, is just my accumulated experiences, things I’ve seen, heard, touched and felt through my life, jumbled about in my mind and abused by time until they show up on a piece of paper,” the artist says. “I would love to point to a sketchbook of ordered images that would tell this story, but, as often as not, the images are spit out on scraps of envelopes near a computer or a convenient napkin ringed with coffee.”
The show kicks off May 4 and runs through May 26. See more of its works below.
Berkeley painter 
Underwater photographer 
In 