Senior Ainsley Millard recalls absentmindedly drawing her pencil across a page, occupying herself with doodles. As she looked down upon her paper, she considered what she had created, and realized in surprise that she had brought into existence art representative of herself.

“I never identified all of this as me,” she said. “My style as it is unique to me. A lot of it’s subjective to my own experiences and telling my own story and using that as a way to express myself because I’m not a very talkative person, at least about personal stuff. So [art] gives me an outlet to be creative, and to also work through my own things.”

For as long as Ainsley can remember, art has been a part of her life. From elective classes in middle school, to her current Honors Art: Directed Portfolio course, Ainsley has enjoyed exploring different mediums of art, such as photography, ceramics and digital art. Art may not have invariably been her primary pursuit, but now, as Ainsley prepares to begin her portfolio, she reflects upon how her forays into various forms of art have shaped her style.

Visual Arts Teacher Pilar Aguero-Esparza traces Ainsley’s growth through the Harker art program and identifies common recurring themes in Ainsley’s art. As Ainsley is heavily influenced by many of her hobbies, Aguero-Esparza notices aspects of anime and manga represented in Ainsley’s subject matter and artistic style.

“For all the students that we’ve worked here, when they get to go through the program, and be at the level, then, of the Honors Directed Post AP [course], it’s really fun to see them expand more in terms of mediums [and] in terms of subject matter,” she said. “But [their art is] typically connected, because all artists were obsessed about certain things. So I can still see a little bit of a thread coming forward in her work.”

Throughout her years at Harker, Ainsley has always chosen to take art electives, from choosing to take the Study of Visual Arts course in freshman year to pursuing the more rigorous AP Studio Art: 2D Design in junior year.

“I started taking actual art classes as electives as soon as they were available to me through the lower school and middle school,” Ainsley said. “I would take art electives in order to not have to take other electives. Art is accessible to me wherever I go, whether that’s making it or finding it somewhere or going to look at exhibits.”

However, with the opportunity to explore more professional facets of art at the upper school, Ainsley has enjoyed grappling with the intellectual challenges that artistic creation presents.

“[Upper school art class] really opened my eyes to the academic aspect of art and how intellectually stimulating art can be,” Ainsley said. “It got me into looking at other independent artists, studying their styles and then trying to find my own, eventually, which is not something that I’d really thought about in years prior, because it was making art to make art, fulfilling a class requirement.”

As Ainsley progressed through her artistic career, she found that she could explore her emotions and experiences through her art, expressing elements of herself through different mediums.

“I do touch on a lot of psychological aspects in my art with things that not only I have struggled with, but all my friends have struggled with and concepts in general that seem to be prevalent in today’s society,” Ainsley said. “Seeing how that affects my art is important to me.”

In addition to exploring her own emotions through art, Ainsley greatly enjoys creating pieces of all types for her friends.

“I also like to draw pictures of my friends or do stuff that they want me to do,” she said. “It makes me happy, being able to give them something that no one else could give them.”

Friend Emma Cabral-Gurleroglu (12) greatly admires Ainsley’s skill and generosity, as she often spontaneously creates art for her friends based on what Emma and others discuss in casual conversation.

“If we’re on a call or something, and one of us mentions something every once in a while, 10 minutes later she’ll send an art piece of it to the chat,” Emma said. “That’s always a fun surprise and really cool.”

Close friend since kindergarten Brooklyn Cicero (12) recalls Ainsley’s making her a small figurine of a monster after Brooklyn expressed her appreciation of Ainsley’s art.

“From there, [Ainsley] decided to make her honors directed theme about those figurines, which was really cute because it’s something that was connected to both of us,” Brooklyn said. “She’s extremely artistically talented.”

As Ainsley considers personal connections to her art, she also searches for themes around which she will center her art for her portfolio.

“For this portfolio, I want to do something in regards to self-exploration and independence, but also contrasting that with the toxicity of being over-independent,” Ainsley said.

Ultimately, as seen in the directions Ainsley hopes to take with her portfolio, her art is representative of everything that has made her who she is now and is deeply intertwined with what she considers to be her artistic identity.

“Whenever I’m commissioned for a piece, I have to add a personal element to it in some way,” she said. “And in a lot of cases that’s the style that I impose on what they’re asking me to make. At the end of the day they’re asking me to make something for them, not anyone else. They want part of me to be a part of that piece, otherwise they’d make it themselves and it’d just be them.”