Blake Aaseby

BLAKE AASEBY

Blake Aaseby is an American artist whose work investigates memory, place, and the subtle shifts that shape personal and collective landscapes. Working primarily in carved oil paintings and pastel drawings, Aaseby creates surfaces where mark making becomes a form of excavation. His compositions unfold through layered lines, textured fields, and carved notations that evoke maps, paths, and traces of lived experience. The result is a body of work that reflects on how environments shape identity and how memory transforms the spaces we move through.

Aaseby approaches his materials with a balance of restraint and curiosity. Using impasto oil applications, hand carved tools, and repeated gestures, he builds rhythmic patterns that register as both diagrammatic and atmospheric. These accumulations of marks suggest shifting terrains and the quiet instability of place, while also hinting at the passage of time and the imprint of movement. Though rooted in formal inquiry, Aaseby’s work carries an emotional resonance, inviting viewers into spaces where recollection, sensation, and observation converge.

Aaseby received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BFA in Studio Art from Azusa Pacific University. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States, including presentations at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago, and galleries on the West Coast and Midwest.

His paintings and drawings are held in private collections across the country. Aaseby lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.