The answer

My last post left you with an artist statement to consider and attempt to imagine what the artist's work is like. Here's the artist statement:

"Through themes of childhood, sexuality and recollection (the artist's) work reveals narratives that are divined from her dreamlike world. This invented place is a fount from which (the artist) has drawn from since her childhood and which she is continually mapping and exploring. The work is a compendium of lost feelings, half dreams and landscapes that seeks to evoke a sense of intimacy, familiarity and wistfulness. Inspired in part by fairy tales by the forests and lakes near her home in Ottawa, these mixed media collages unveil a strange enchantment, one shared between nature and imagination."

And the guest artist is...

Amy A Thompson who was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1971. She studied Fine Art at York University and graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design with honours in 1995. Amy is represented in Ottawa by Dale Smith Gallery and currently has a solo exhibition there called Glint.

I've selected three of Amy's mixed media works to highlight here. I hope they fairly represent her work over the last three years. For a more complete listing of Amy's work visit her website where all the works are categorized by theme/series in the lower left corner under menu.

I was particularly taken with the series: Lost Albums II , Fortune Birds, Have a Good Time and Smut. As viewers we respond to work based on our own experiences and interests, I know Amy's work speaks to me because of its delicacy and references to childhood and imagination. It plays directly into my past experiences as a primary teacher. Her use of patterned backgrounds , mostly in subtle hues, adds safeness, predictability and a child like innocence to the scenes . At times this innocence is juxtaposed with more serious, adult content as in Smut which is an interesting treatment of sexuality. I thought is represented this adult world and a child's discovery of it very well. These pieces brought back memories of my first introduction to 'the birds and bees" at age 9 when another child provided very descriptive images of exactly what went on in the bedroom. But my understanding of it was still influenced by my innocent life up to that point. The works in Smut brought me back to that time in my life.

In Fortune Birds, Amy integrates fortune cookie sayings into bird collage portraits. I love the lyrical line work that represents bird song. I was fascinated with this execution because I am working on a painting in my Reading a Garden series where I wanted to represent birdsong, I'm still thinking about that and now nothing will be good enough because I loved what Amy did. I also collect fortune cookie wisdom but up to this point I've never done anything with it.

Old Shool 1, 2009, mixed media on board 18 x 18.5 in.


Moonchild, 2008, mixed media on paper , 35.25 x 28.5 in.

Haunt- Ladies Night Out, 2007 , mixed media on paper, 23.5 x 14.5

All three images found on Dale Smith Gallery , used with artist's permission.

Did your impressions from reading Amy's artist statement and her work match?

I would love to hear my readers responses to this work which made a mark with me.