Artist Interview with Amy Graham

Artist Interview with Amy Graham

Purchase fine art for sale by Amy Graham.


Welcome to AllArtWorks Featured Artist Series!


1. What other profession is similar to being an artist and why?

When I teach, I compare making and understanding art to sports and dance a lot: the skills of hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, balancing planning with reacting to unforeseen circumstances, practice, hard work and allowing oneself to enter a ‘zone’ all translate well to the artistic process.


2. What’s the nicest thing you can remember someone said about your work, or an individual piece?

That it evoked a particular memory for them and transported them to a noteworthy experience.


3. What’s one thing you’d like everyone to know about you as an artist?

I choose my battles carefully: I am very type A, but I have learned to let a lot of stuff roll off my back when it comes to my practice and my work.
4. What was the last piece of art that you saw that blew you away?

Swoon always destroys me, and so does Judy Pfaff’s current show at Pamela Salisbury’s gallery. I’m also blown away by Andrew Faulkner’s paintings. I never tire of Os Gemeos.


5. What’s something you haven’t done but you want to do in art/painting?

I can’t wait to tear up old clothes and combine with found objects to create some giant stretched mixed-media palimpsest pieces.


6. Which artist do you like better - Ingres or Delacroix, and why?*

Difficult to split hairs between two masters: Delacroix hits me more viscerally because of his propensity for narrative. While I appreciate the sort of direct gaze and freshly unapologetic nature of Ingres’ works, Delacroix strikes me as a bit more generous to his audience, allowing we viewers to enter in at our own pace.

*The reason we ask about Delacroix and Ingres is because they were contemporaries with wildly different styles!