New Artist Watch Feature at Escape Into Life

Amy Pleasant, Sisters Likely, 2016

From the Series A Woman's Work

Acrylic on Canvas, 24" x 30"

Copyright © Amy Pleasant

Used With Permission

PLEASE DO NOT COPY IMAGE

I am delighted today to feature Seattle-based painter Amy Pleasant in my new Artist Watch column at Escape Into Life.

An award-winning, nationally exhibited artist who also has had a solo show in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Amy is known primarily as a figurative and abstract painter. Drawing deeply on her belief that art is a fundamental form of personal expression that can aid in fostering individual and collective change, Amy explores in her work autobiographical experiences, family relationships, generational transitions, time's passage, and memory and remembrance. 

In addition to painting, Amy also writes prose and poetry. (Read "Artist Takes Long Journey to Healing", her debut post at The Huffington Post.) Following is an ekphrastic poem Amy wrote for the artwork that appears above:

Sisters Likely

One person on the planet, a mirror of experience, yet opposites,

a lifetime of push, pull,

push away.

A vacillating pendulum moved not by gravity,

but by a tab kept of parental slights and petty jealousies.

then. . . 

an expansion of the world; a bigger, exciting, lonelier space,

sisters; confidants, defenders, a soft place among strangers.

then. . .

a shrinking of the world; witnessing parents taking their leave,

eventually we all become orphans,

last ones standing;

sisters

Showcased at Artist Watch are eight images from three of Amy's series: A Woman's Work, Shift: Journey to Abstraction, and Time and Memory. Also included are Amy's Artist Statement and a brief biography, as well as links to Amy's Website and social media sites and to her upcoming exhibition "TERRIBLE BEAUTY: under the canopy" at Gallery 110 in Seattle.

Note: My two-part interview with Amy will appear here at Writing Without Paper on June 1 and June 2.