AKA amykaplanartwork

About
When I tell people I'm an artist, they inevitably ask, "What do you do?" I'm never quite sure how to answer this question, partly, I think, because the questioner often doesn't really know what they are asking. The idea of "artist" is very broad and somewhat esoteric. Sometimes they are just looking for an easy answer, and hope to hear something that they can understand as a concrete job description. And certainly I can answer that- usually I say something like, "I'm primarily a painter. Oils, watercolors. But I love to experiment, and who knows what I'll be interested in creating next!"
But the question is more interesting than that. What do I do? Well, I spend a lot of time observing. I take lots of pictures, some with my camera, and some with my mind. I react to color, and light, and the timeless beauty of nature. But what intrigues me the most, and animates my work, is the emotional sense of place. I'm fascinated with the moments in-between, the pregnant pause: that sense of something having happened, or something about to happen- coming soon, or just missed. This theme shows up in my work from the most representational to the most abstract. Sailboats hoping for a race, waiting in the calm before the storm; or a well-worn path through the beach grasses, empty now in the late afternoon sun, but surely witness to sunburned legs and sandy feet just moments ago. In my "Ambivalence" series, all of the work is directly related to this concept, and the conflict of emotions that sometimes keeps us trapped in those moments, stalled in the pause. So for now, this is what I do. I explore this concept, and see it echoed in the world around me. And I try, with the variety of tools available to me, to have you too, pause and feel the pull of the past and the anticipation of the future, to hold there just a bit, and see, really see, the power and the beauty of the moment of now.
I am available for home color consultations and private lessons as well as offering original works for sale.