Ashley McCoy purges pain on a white canvas.

McCoy, who has a digestive disorder that can cause excruciating bouts of stomach pain at times, finds relief from disease when she digs her fingers and knuckles into paint and lets her pain fall on the canvas.

"Instead of whining about it and complaining, I sit down and paint," said Ashley, a 26-year-old who grew up in Broadway and now lives in Harrisonburg. "It's a very good exercise in letting go of it."

"It" is Crohn's disease, a painful, incurable illness that inflames the small and large intestines and causes diarrhea, abdominal cramps, weight loss and numerous complications. The pain comes in waves, with periods of pain or remission sometimes lasting years.

The disease's effects on Ashley are the theme of "Relics," a collection of abstract work on display at the Artful Dodger through mid-April.

The art - with names like "Disorder" and "Shred's" - is chaotic. Entangled lines and letters and shapes form a potpourri of paint.

Ashley created it after spending all of March 2003 in a hospital. She was taking dozens of medicines at the time, including immuno-suppresors and steroids.

With the series of paintings, Ashley makes her public art debut; something she hopes will move her toward being a full-time artist. (Now, she has a fulltime job as a graphics artist for a furniture store and does art on the side.)

Ashley's goal was born early in her life. "I think I had crayons as I came out of the womb," she laughs.

She took art in high school and college, graduating from James Madison University in December with an art degree.

Other pieces of her art are already semi-public, like the realistic murals she paints in homes. This first public exhibit, though, is more personal than the underwater scene in her son's bedroom or the huge margarita in the basement of another home.

"It can be scary to the core," Ashley said about showing art that delves into some of her most intimate feelings. "It's an extension of who I am."

In her exhibit, it's an extension of her disease.

Doctors diagnosed Ashley with Crohn's when she was a 19-year-old college student. At the time, she was attending Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg. She weighed 80 pounds, couldn't keep any food down and had to be fed intravenously.

After numerous tests at multiple hospitals along the East Coast, doctors said Crohn's was to blame.

"Right then and there, my life changed," Ashley said. "I didn't know anything about [the disease]. I just knew my life was about to change."

In and out of the hospital, it took her seven years to graduate from college. "It was unbelievably frustrating," she said.

Not so much that she gave in to the pain, though. "I'd much rather do something with that energy than let it fester," Ashley said. "I don't want to be angry."

Some suggested Ashley try to get disability pay rather than trying to work. "No!" she responded. "I don't want to be labeled as disabled."

So she tries to live a normal life, working and creating art.

She already tried the starving artist scene when she was in college. "I could eat a can of kidney beans and be fine," she said, remembering her time working part-time as an artist.

But two years ago, she and Jeff Reid, her partner of six years, had a son. And with medical bills in the tens of thousands, Ashley can't be a starving artist anymore.

That's why she's pushing her art in her first public exhibit. "You can't sit around and wait to be discovered," she said. "You have to tackle it, and its hard work."

Hard work, yes, but she hopes it will pay off, maybe even with eventual shows in large cities like New York.

"If I can be lucky enough to let art be an integral part of life," Ashley said, "I'll be living my dream."

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