Chrysta Avers is a visual artist based in Pensacola, Florida, with a background in studio art, curation, and event coordination. She’s been drawing for as long as she can remember, but lately she’s been finding her way back to it after a quieter stretch, asking new questions about who she is as an artist and what she wants to make.
The work she brought to Azule sits somewhere between confession and curiosity, a painting set in a supermarket, exploring aimlessness and the beauty hiding in ordinary places.
Watch the full conversation below.
“I’m trying to be better at being vulnerable.”
Chrysta describes her current body of work as circling mental health, familial grief, and health anxiety, using the canvas as an outlet for processing those things alongside the general weight of the world. She finds inspiration in unexpected places. A color palette she clocked in an episode of House, a blue shirt layered over lighter blue, white beneath, a red stethoscope cutting through, is already earmarked for a future painting. Other times, the spark comes from a conversation with a friend or something small noticed in her day.
The piece she worked on at Azule centers on aimlessness, using a supermarket as its stage. She’s drawn to the beauty in mundane settings, the kind of moment most people pass through without seeing. During the residency she gave herself permission to sit with the mess of it, blocking in color, letting the piece find itself without rushing toward resolution.
When the painting pushed back, she let herself play. She carved a small guitar linocut for a friend’s birthday, the first one she’d made in years. She pressed flowers in a small press, saving them for something later. She made a doodle page, nothing serious, just to stay loose.
“I wanted to do something just kind of silly and not very serious. That’s what I’ve been doing.”
Azule gave her something her regular life rarely offers: uninterrupted hours to paint, and nature close enough to walk into whenever she needed to pause.
Chrysta Avers is a visual artist based in Pensacola, Florida, with a background in studio art, curation, and event coordination. Her current work explores mental health, grief, and the beauty found in mundane spaces.