Amanda Church
Region: Northeast
As portraits of human psychology in a multi-referential interplay of form and color, my paintings not only allude to aspects of the body and mind but also reference cultural artifacts signifying changing beliefs and behavior. As filtered through the artist's eye and hand, segments of pop culture that have been embedded in a generation's collective unconscious become translated into a personal "symbology" that, in addition to its roots in Pop art and Color Field painting, draws on such non-art art forms as album covers, rock posters, and graffiti. These connect to issues such as personal vision/visibility, fantasy, abstraction, and rebellion, which in turn relate to how I approach my painting as a seamless integration of psychological and corporeal reality. Artists have been described as mediating the process of introspection, and so I also interpret the convoluted arena of human emotions, making manifest a visual realization of what lies within.