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Visions From the Heart
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: August - 2022
For Amy Phillips, the light is always there, waiting to be captured.
Maybe it’s Amy Phillips’ graphic design back-ground that infuses tiny smile-droplets into heroils and acrylics.Look at herSquash and Blossoms. She finds a reverence inspent flowers, and what’s more, she memorializes each femaleflower in its attachment to its offspring.The result is anything but a row of dead blooms. It’s a celebra-tion of nature, new life, nourishment. Now, that’s a smile.Look at her painting,Man on Nature. A miniature man, perhapsa symbol of humankind, his arms determinedly crossed, sitson the tip of a narrow leaf. From out here, he looks to be in aprecarious place, yet he acts like he’s suited up and in charge.This guy is about to take a tumble. The tension this simplestatement presents is funny yet foreboding.See these and other images on Amy’s art festival show site:eventeny.com/company/amyfeilphillips.It’s difficult to categorize Amy’s style. The closest we can comeis expressive-painterly. Her work is clean, economical, oftenpoignant, colorful, bright, and full of light.She says, “Our world can be dark and heavy, burdened withanxiety. The word ‘light’ is not only literal as defined byvalue and contrast, but also light as in lightness of spirit andmaybe even a lightness (as in lifting a weight) – moving ustoward hope.”Amy is in the second phase of her art career. The first was as pro-duction artist, art director, graphic designer and creative director(you pay some dues to get that title), and graphic designer.In her second artistic phase, she’s now a studio art graduatewith honors, her credentials capped with an MBA in Marketing.When asked why she didn’t just leap right into fine art after get-ting her Bachelors, she says, “I had to step back and question,‘Do I want to be competing with starving artists?’ And makinga living at art shows and galleries might have compromised mydesire to paint my truth. A lot of fine artists get very commer-cial and sell for demand instead of what their hearts dictate.”So, she took a job in the related field of graphic design andpainted only for the joy of it. It took the pressure off. And,looking at her body of work today, those tiny smiles beamingfrom it, it is clear her strategy paid off.To view more of her paintings or inquire about commissions,check out her current Laurel ad, visitamyfeilphillips.wixsite.com/artist; visit Uptown Gallery in Franklin, or catch her at TheBascom shows.
by Donna Rhodes
