Bio

Amy Amalia is a figurative painter living and working in New York. Her work is deeply informed by Hermetic Philosophy and ancient esoteric practices. She received her BFA from SUNY Purchase, 2015 and her MFA from The New School of Art and Design, 2018.

Statement

Amy Amalia is a figurative painter based in New York. In her current series she works to depict a symbolic representation of transformation in the body that is initiated by turning inward.

Amalia paints the figures in her work undergoing a massive unraveling of there inner psyches in order to create space for the new. Oil paint is her primary material choice for articulating this process. She uses thick, vivid brushstrokes to demonstrate the stillness required in meditation, as active-something that is roiling underneath the skin and rewiring DNA.

As a first generation Guyanese-American, she channels the experience of displacement and alienation that can be felt throughout the Diaspora and works to show the process of reconciling this trauma through radical self-care. Just as fire is used to turn metal to gold in Alchemy, the relentless and oppressive heat of society casted down on the marginalized can be used for Soul Alchemy.

www.amyamalia.com

@_amyamalia