Statement
After decades of painting scenes from nature, illustrating field guides, creating
ecosystem posters, painting birds in their environment, and teaching, I’ve been drawn
over the past ten years to pare my imagery to rocks and water - the solid amid the
fluid, the seemingly permanent amid agents of erosion. Two things triggered this choice
- the ongoing human and geophysical disruption of the natural world, and, a desire to
more closely capture my experience of the seen and unseen layers of life energy…the
shifting ground.
I have practiced non-dominant hand drawing and painting to access the subconscious
for therapeutic purposes. There came a point in that practice that it made sense to cut
a painting up to better understand it. This was the precursor to applying collage
techniques to my professional paintings.
My process begins with a drawing from nature which I use as my reference. At a
certain stage of painting, when it starts to come together, I divide it into sections based
on seeing small compositions within the larger whole. As I rearrange these, I look for
existing connections and opportunities to develop new connections among the pieces
while painting the assemblage to completion. Marks on paper find new juxtapositions
and layers. Additional pieces might be affixed on top. This evolutionary process more
closely captures what I see and my felt experience of disorder breaking the surface of
calm perception.
In a time of so much greed driving destruction of habitat and pervasive climate
injustice, I paint to celebrate the beauty around us, to acknowledge the human
connection to all forms of life, and to witness the sacred.
Bio
Amy was born in 1951 in East Liverpool OH near the point where Ohio, West Virginia
and Pennsylvania meet.
Amy studied art at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Colorado, Philadelphia
College of Art and San Fransisco Art Institute before she earned a BFA in painting from
the University of Idaho. Her career began in wildlife illustration. Painting for gallery
shows and commissions followed. She has exhibited work in Olympia, Seattle, Atlanta,
Denver, Los Angeles and Palm Desert, CA. Her watercolor and acrylic paintings are in
the corporate collections of The Boeing Company, Pepsi, Sea Ray Boats, Colorado
National Bank, Bell South, Coca-Cola, Sheraton Hotels, and in many private
collections. Amy taught drawing and painting at TESC and has taught watercolor
privately for the past decade.