ARTIST STATEMENT
After inheriting the family albums from my mother and aunt a broadening of interest beyond my own family resulted in a fascination with other people’s photographs. I started looking at flea markets, and antique stores at the photos strangers left behind. These dusty, abandoned piles of pictures begged the question, “What becomes of us when there is no one to remember?
These paintings provide a subtle nod to a narrative probing the complexities, ambiguities and messiness of a life well lived. Looking for hints in a look, a stance, the space between in the candid shots before and after the posed picture. My efforts to animate these strangers seek to spotlight a moment, an animation of a life. The stories brought to the canvas provide some sort of closure, the hint of a story buried for all time. I leave it to the viewer to fill in the blanks.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Amy Pleasant is a Seattle figurative artist whose work examines the most common of experiences; family, life transitions and generational changes. Her paintings provide a visual language disclosing the complex navigation of human relationships. Embedded deeply in her practice and work as a visual artist is a belief that art in its most fundamental form is a personal expression and ultimately finds its rightful place through the engagement of the viewer.
Pleasant studied Computer Animation at he Art Institute of Seattle and attended the Drawing and Painting Atelier under Mark Kang O’Higgins. She has participated in national exhibitions in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, as well as having solo exhibitions in Seattle, Dallas and Amsterdam. In 2012 she was one of twelve artists featured nationally by the Woman’s Caucus for the Arts and was a recipient of an Artist Trust Gap grant in 2015. Her work can be found in personal and corporate collections in the Pacific NW and the Netherlands. Amy is a writer as well, and her poetry can be found on her blog, Life Meets Art and her Arts and Social Justice features can be found at Huff Post and Bust Magazine. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her family and hiking in the Pacific Northwest.
© Amy Pleasant