Ramsey Ayers
On a gorgeous afternoon in May, Lafayette artist Ramsey Ayers captures a glimpse of the idyll. She’s got all three of her children at home—her daughter rolling pasta downstairs, her son catching fish across the way. The sun is out, the temperature just right, the flowers blooming. There’s nowhere to be. Within the perimeters of her home, this moment couldn’t be more perfect.
Of course—as Ayers is sure to point out—there are layers to reality, and just as real as her moment of domestic heaven is the tumult and suffering of our shared larger world. This is the human experience, of course: the constant burden of awareness that every joyful moment joins with an incomprehensible multitude of chaos just outside of it.
As an artist, Ayers’ life’s work has been a vocation of capturing the joy untainted, distilling it into a simple, pure expression of tranquility: Juniper Island. “It’s my own little make believe world,” she said. “It’s easy living over there, no pressures, no telling where on the continent they are, a place of absolute simplicity and tranquility.”
Ayers has been painting this warm-toned fantasyland—teeming with motifs of home, harvest, canoes, and her iconic starburst trees—for almost twenty years now. Her body of acrylics—adorned in mixed media ranging from sticks to beads to fishing wire—is presented in a signature folk art style recognizable from a mile away, a style that unites each individual piece to the others, creating a legacy tableau of Ayers’ personal utopia.
That such a personal expression of her unique inner sanctuary has for so long resonated with so many others is perhaps a testament to Ayers’ capacity for empathy and attunement to the collective needs of her larger community.
When asked about her inspiration for Juniper Island, Ayers shook her head. “I’ve often wondered what led me to this place,” she said, explaining that she’s long been at a loss to try and draw it to any external influences. Since its “emergence” right out of Louisiana State University’s painting and drawing program, Ayers said, she’s always discovered each scene organically, following her emotional instincts toward color to achieve calmness and energy, then using found objects to apply layers and texture and life. “Every single leaf’s placement is chosen based on where my eye sees fit,” she said. “Color is what leads me in my work.”
That such a personal expression of her unique inner sanctuary has for so long resonated with so many others is perhaps a testament to Ayers’ capacity for empathy and attunement to the collective needs of her larger community. Since her first gallery show at CC’s Coffeehouse in 2002, she’s landed exhibitions at Galerie Eclaireuse in Lafayette and The Canary Gallery in New Orleans, was featured as the poster artist for Festival International in 2004, and her work has graced the cover of this very magazine no less than four times. She’s also sold countless commissions, offering a more personalized piece of paradise to the many customers who come looking for it.
And over the course of the last twenty years, Juniper Island has accompanied Ayers as a realm parallel to her life, evolving—if subtly—with her as a retreat that’s always there, though never an absolute escape. In the end, even with paradise at her fingertips, Ayers has always chosen to be present in reality—even taking time away from her art entirely to hold her family together in difficult times—such as the 2016 flood that totally destroyed their home—or to simply focus on being a good mother.
But after each of these breaks, Ayers said, Juniper Island was there when she returned. “I remember being nervous that I would forget how to paint this, that it would be gone,” she said. “But I always came right back to it.”
These days, with all of the kids home from school and a pandemic rocking the world as we know it, Ayers said it’s been difficult to find time to paint. Somewhat ironically, her life—quieter and simpler than usual—resembles her paintings now a little more than ever. But as the headlines remind us daily, this isn’t Juniper Island. So when she does find a moment, she’ll go upstairs and she’ll follow the colors, discovering another corner of this carefree, peaceful place—this refuge that the world so needs right now.
Ramsey Ayers’ work can be found for purchase at The Birds’ Nest and Entre Nous in Lafayette, and commissions can be ordered via ramseyayers.com.
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