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Ashley Clark Biography

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“Contentment and joy and grief all blurred together---and in a way, Eliza had become the color. And the world, the water, so that all the pieces of her blended in unexpected ways as the canvas was turned a little to the left, a little to the right, and the pink dripped down into the blue, down into the yellow, down into the brown, and so on; life and loss and harvest from season to season. A garden's blooms, continually returning for another encore until the circularity of it all becomes in itself a promise through the winter and the spring and the summer and the fall. Always turning, always returning color to the ground and color to the sky.”

ChangeSeasonsColorsCircle Of Life
Book:Paint and Nectar
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“Beauty arrests our attention to look upward. It reminds us that there are things in life, such as love and the divine, that we long for so ardently we know---even if we only know it for a fleeting moment---that our yearnings are far deeper than our eyes can see. And that's what faith is, I think." William situated his elbow against the ground and propped his fist against his cheek. "That's really profound." "Thank you," Eliza smiled. "That's why I like to include bluebirds in my paintings. They're a reminder that while beauty may be fickle in its coming and going, there's a permanence in the impression it leaves on our hearts. There are roots growing within us that sustain its wings. And maybe that, really, makes beauty the greatest witness to glory there is.”

FaithBeautyBluebirds
Book:Paint and Nectar
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“You thought you could create more indigo, and I understand why you wished it, Eliza, for indigo is the color of bluebirds, the color of the twilight sky. Newton insisted it be added to the colors of the rainbow, and once upon a time, its cousin true blue was such a rare pigment, its price rivaled gold. People have fought wars over indigo crops and used it to bolster and brag of their wealth. Why? All in an attempt to make beauty lasting.”

BeautyColorEverlastingRareIndigo
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“Alice marveled at the flowers. Huge, fragrant, God-praising blooms. That rose, transplanted and broken, giving beauty to this ground. The dirt and the seed, the flood and the flame, all writing a story of where we belong. Where roses grow, but more than that. Where roses bloom, and where life---full and glorious at its crescendo---finds its meaning over and over again. Maybe the important thing was the same root bound them through any circumstance and any ground. And after a few months, or maybe a few years, the rose would bloom again. The rose always bloomed again. Because somewhere, deep within that plant, was life---abundantly.”

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Book:Where the Last Rose Blooms
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“She heard the twitter of the bluebirds whose families had lived here for decades and longer, and she saw one out-of season, beautifully pure gardenia. And the fragrance of it was so sweet, so innocent, that it was fairy dust to her senses. Smelling it sent her tumbling back and forth through time. And she was at once a young woman dancing in William's arms and an older woman returning to Eden with a new appreciation for its hard-won innocence.”

RemembranceBluebirdsGardenia
Book:Paint and Nectar
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“The slightest sea breeze clung to the air as Peter and Harper walked the pathway along Charleston Harbor. A few dolphins played in the not-so-distant waves, and sunlight fell like glitter in shades of orange and pink against the water. And this---this---was Charleston. All they needed was a front porch painted haint blue and a proverbial glass of sweet tea.”

SunsetSouth CarolinaCharleston
Book:The Dress Shop on King Street
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“What if even then, God had plans for a second garden? Another tree, and another chance to reach out and accept the abundance of life? What if in Eden, God was planning Gethsemane?" The question echoed through Lucy, growing in power with each reverberation within her soul. She held a flower in her hands. The sweet, exotic perfume floated deep into Lucy's heart---carrying Ms. Beth's words right along beside it. Lucy hesitated, allowing the words to take effect. "Are you circling a closed Eden, or have you chosen to step into Gethsemane, through the open gate?" Lucy blinked. She had never thought of it like that. "Maybe what you thought was a closed gate meant to punish you is actually God's way of protecting you from remaining in a place where you won't and can't receive His life." The truth washed Lucy's heart with color. As it brushed over the harsh edges with water, watercolor blooms began to blend one into the other, filling her with understanding. Lucy's heart swelled as the long-dry soil soaked up this water. "Where you're preoccupied with your failures and your fears and the desire to preserve all you might lose, God has a plan to preserve something else. To root you in a place where life can grow within you once more, freely and abundantly. A garden of death for a garden of life, where through His own resurrection Jesus returns all that was stolen.”

VitalityRenewalGethsemaneGods Plan
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“The fragrance of the gardenias along the porch carried on the breeze. The blooms were always sweetest from freshly opened buds. But they had to fall, they had to change, for the roots to grow. So that next season, more buds would open, and the fragrance would spread even farther. Gardenias. She had never painted gardenias before. But they bloomed all at once as she'd never noticed them blooming years prior, and the fragrance was so alluring that the smell of it matched the delicate strokes of her smallest paintbrush, and it was the first of May and the first of so many other things, she was sure.”

FragranceGardenia
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“But the sunlight had faded, and now she would enjoy the twilight-turned-evening from the beauty of the garden. Her garden. Was it even possible that might be true? She still thought of the space as belonging to her mother. That she might now possess the place herself was at once an honor and an overwhelming responsibility: this place where red-and-pink camellia petals fluttered to the ground as though creating a carpet for fairies.”

GardenInherited
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“From the beginning, I have been working between the seams. Where you have ripped, I have mended. When you have torn, I have sewn you. Stitching death to resurrection, failure to dreams, hurt to healing. I never throw out a fabric because it needs repairing. You've spent your life on the other side of the seams, thinking all the if-only's. But there will always be another section to piece. Another hole that needs mending. So long as you live, you will have loose stitches---don't avoid them. Come and exchange them for strong seams. Keep the fabric of your dreams.”

MendingSeamstressStitched Up
Book:The Dress Shop on King Street
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“That rosebush, poetically speaking, was sort of like our hope for the future. It'd been ripped up and transplanted, shaken and moved around. And yet, as Rose said, it bloomed. And will continue blooming still. From the broken ground, somehow those delicate, vibrant petals came anew, offering a fragrance that might catch on the breeze and carry down the street to where the bluebirds flew.”

ContinuityRosebush
Book:Where the Last Rose Blooms
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“There are times in life---sometimes, not always---when the water on paper drips with the color of just the perfect hue, until the effect is something so ethereal that the artist knows it must simply be experienced because she can never produce it again. And the color shifts over time, shifts still over sunlight, until the watercolors fade completely back into the paper itself, and all that's left is the memory.”

PaintingEffectiveWatercolors
Book:Paint and Nectar
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“Harper once read an article about hummingbirds, and how with certain kinds, the sunlight becomes a prism through their wings and the prism becomes a rainbow. All that's left is the shadow of the little bird in the photo and the rainbow wings that carry it through gardens. Moving from beauty to beauty, of kept promises with each open, living flower. Everlasting hope. Everlasting covenant. Even dead seeds make roots, and roots underground sprout blooms, and the rain falls, and in due time and in due season the hummingbird returns, looking for nectar and hoping to find a harvest. Carrying her story in her rainbow wings, from generation to generation.”

WingsRainbowHummingbirdsRegrowth
Book:The Dress Shop on King Street
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“Spring 1930 The wind whipped the little white flowers from the pear tree outside Eliza's window overlooking the garden. The flowers would not bloom again this spring. The racket those branches made was too much to sleep through, so Eliza slipped her wrap around her silken chemise and wandered over toward the window. The garden outside was dark. The garden, once so full of hope and promise, would look different in the morning, after the storm finished ravaging what was left of the February blooms. But she had already, of course, fallen in love with a different season after her mother and grandmother died in the summer. She had already adopted February over June. So she would simply have to do that again: to tell her heart to see the beauty in March or April or May. The problem, of course, occurred when the wind roared and the rains flooded everything. Nothing about this was the way she'd planned. There was nothing wrong with Robert. There was just nothing right about him either. But why would she pine for the man who'd left her behind? Why, in such uncertain times, should she cease to keep living... so preoccupied by a dream? Maybe she could find a new dream. And she always had her love for painting, so that was something, at least. When the nectar fell from the trees, she would paint it by memory.”

PaintingChangesNew Dream
Book:Paint and Nectar
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“For now, she would dance among the garden. When azaleas bloom in winter. When hurricanes come in fall. Maybe the paint was not so much these out-of-season moments, but more what was growing in between them. The clumsy grasp to keep summer's blooms in winter would inevitably fail. And yet hope always came rising up, resurrected from the frozen ground. For as garden turns to garden, flowers turn to dust, and glory goes to glory, the changes are within us. And maybe beauty's greatest achievement isn't in the staying... but that in its return, again and again, it paints the eternal---all the beautiful things that will never fade.”

PaintingTrue BeautyConstant ChangeRegrowth
Book:Paint and Nectar
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