Amy Pleasant





Perhaps, Interiors
Amy Pleasant
Statement

My paintings reflect a compulsion to make sense of a world of uncertainty, seeking out the balance that the natural world provides. I began this series while spending the bulk of the pandemic in a guest bedroom converted to classroom, remotely teaching to the blank screens hiding my adolescent students. In an attempt to counteract this bleak and joyless experience I began to hike every Saturday at a nearby forest reserve. This lead to a coupling, an intertwining of the botanical world and material objects. Each painting begins with high contrast dark shadowy abstracted forms, providing a structure for scaffolding of subsequent multiple layers, building light upon dark resulting in a painterly and color saturated crescendo. The arc of my painting life; past and present, reveals a pattern that the darker the days, the brighter the palette.

These paintings were sourced from black and white discarded photos, found in my own family album, thrift shops and antique stores. I had earlier used these photographs for my figurative work, however, it seemed fully right to leave the people behind as I returned to those photos, focusing this time on the accouterments of a life lived. These objects became the metaphorical anchor and at some point they fall way completely in deference to the natural world.

In recent days, I felt the impulse to return to this theme as we seem to be entering a most uncertain time in history. I reimagined those vintage photos, reading the broken promises in light of the current direction of our country (Post) and revisiting the idea of nature as mender, this time imagining the world 100 years after our exit. Somehow, finding hope that regardless of the most extreme change imagined, some things always and forever retain their adaptation, resilience and eminence.





Bio

Amy Pleasant is a Seattle painter, known for both her color saturated figurative and botanical paintings sourced and embellished from black and white vintage photographs After spending several years in the field of education, she returned to art school to study design at the Art Institute of Seattle followed by the Drawing and Painting Atelier at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle under painter, Mark Kang O’Higgins.

She has shown in group exhibitions in Chicago, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Berkeley Art Center and the New York Children’s Museum. Museum exhibitions include the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (WA), San Juan Islands Museum of Art (WA), Zanesville Museum of Art (OH). Amy has participated in solo exhibitions at the Canton Museum of Art.(OH), Sarah Gormley Gallery (Columbus, OH), Gallery 110 Seattle, (WA) the Dallas Public Library Gallery, (TX) and Reade Amsterdam Gallery (NL) She was one of twelve artists featured nationally in 2014 by the Woman’s Caucus of Art and received an Artists Trust Gap Grant in 2015. Residencies include Blue Mountain Center (NY), Fair Isle Studio (Shetlands, UK) and just completed a 12 month residency at the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island in 2024. (WA) Her work can be found in corporate and personal collections in the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest and the Netherlands.