Amy Sandler

Amy’s work begins with spontaneous drawing from observation. She is drawn to the unplanned mind, using the subconscious and pulling from her hands and body. She draws what she feels most pulled toward, the parts that hold energy. These drawings return later in her paintings as memories, and working in oil introduces new possibilities: edges bleed, and forms soften. She heavily thins the paint with solvent and lets it seep into the canvas and into itself. Painting feels like a whisper game; she allows each piece to change each time she makes it through translation, experimentation, and scaling up and down across various mediums.

Upon her canvas, forms and gestures become interplays of tension. The negative space is left open, sometimes becoming autonomous, its own entity . They intertwine like flames. Planes of colour remain flat at times but never still, due to subtle colour variations; they waver slightly and vibrate. Yellow orbs recur in her work, symbols of light and energy. Her paintings are like poems: a moment that generates a feeling in need of no explanation. Gesture is important: fine lines and sweeping strokes echo the diagrams of forces and architecture of natural forms.

As an artist living in Scotland, Amy is influenced by the landscape around her, but reimagines the colours, often channelling the sunlit blues and vibrant yellows seen in the work of Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. Although her work contains these elements of nature, she is not interested in representation, but in observation as sensation. She makes work for the feeling it gives her, and believes we create in relation to everything we have already seen. The marks she returns to are those her hands have collected over time, forms her eyes have learned to recognise and crave.  She takes what she needs from what she sees, trusting instinct and sensation.