Featured Artist Amy Pleasant

Artist Amy Pleasant’s brightly colorful mixed media paintings, focus on the past merging with our collective future. Visit her website to learn more.

 

 

Although painting is my passion and I have been drawing since I was a small child, it was not my first vocation. I spent several years in the field of education teaching elementary and middle school. In order to pursue a long-held dream of becoming an artist, I decided to return to school to study computer animation at the Art Institute of Seattle and the Drawing and Painting Atelier at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle.

 

 

My early still life paintings were marked by bright and bold color, and line heavily influenced by my animation training.

 

 

As I thought about developing my artistic voice I realized it was time to relate my art to my life. I found myself facing the juxtaposition of raising three children while caring for my terminally ill mother. The result was my first series which focused on a deeper exploration of generational transition.

 

 

This initial series, Family Album, was rooted in the family photographs and artifacts inherited from my mother and my aunt.

 

 

My circle expanded as I searched thrift stores and antique stores for discarded photos, curious about how many generations pass before there is no one who remembers that person. The paintings served as a final animation and homage of those who had gone before.

 

 

My focus has moved from what is past to our collective future. I look at the passing of the torch from one generation to the next and the role and duty of the previous generation to have the wisdom of knowing when to step aside and let the next generation lead the way.

 

 

My art reflects a nod towards future generations.

 

 

A leaning towards abstraction has influenced media and technique choices with a mixture of line and a layering of paint over traditional painting and mono print methods—the new upon the old.

 

 

My interest is in both the metaphor of abstract painting, the idea beyond the thing and the narrative of figurative painting. I wish to give the viewer a bit of a nudge and let them make their own interpretations and conclusions.

 

 

My work has been exhibited in Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Amsterdam and is in private and public collections in the Pacific Northwest and the Netherlands.

 

Artist Amy Pleasant invites you to follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

 

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