about ava
The artist in a pizza shop in rural Ohio in 2024. (Photo credit 2024, Sapana Vora)
The artist risking her dang neck to hang a painting for her first gallery show, SEEN: Exchange, in March 2025. (Photo credit 2025, SEEN: Exchange)
Ava Elaine Hartwell Bagley began painting in earnest because she had an art teacher who told her “every day, do something great.” After 25 years, she hopes to live up to that teacher’s words.
Ava’s work is informed by the Impressionists, post-impressionists, modernists, and regionalists, including Manet, Degas, George Bellows, and Andrew Wyeth. She favors bold colors, strong lines, and clear compositions to illustrate themes including queer intimacy and responses to the American political environment.
Born in San Diego, California, Ava and her family moved around the country until they settled in Boston in the early 1990s. From 1995 to 2002, Ava studied figure drawing, composition, and acrylic painting under Jim Chisholm at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. She also studied comic book illustration at the Art Institute of Boston and figure drawing from life models at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.
Ava did not go to college for painting, but she kept at it, independently learning digital art at Oberlin College. After graduation, she returned to painting, developing her skills on a screened-in porch in Somerville, Massachusetts. She resides just over the border of Washington, DC, where her studio looks out over Rock Creek Park.
In addition to Mr. Chisholm, Ava would like to thank Ms. Dunapace, Ms. Burns, Ms. Nelson, and Mr. Moran.