Bio

Amy Chaiklin is an internationally exhibited figurative painter who graduated with a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She is an alumni of New York Studio School in Paris, France. Originally from New Jersey, Chaiklin has lived in Berlin, Germany, and currently lives in New York, NY.

She has received a combined grant from Women’s Studio Workshop/New York State Council on the Arts in 1999.

Chaiklin’s local and international artist-in-residencies have been at: Makor, NYC, NY (2006), Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY (1998), Stiftung Starke, Berlin, Germany (1992-1994), and Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, France (1988).

Art Publications that include Chaiklin’s artwork:

Club 57 Film, Performance and Art in the East Village 1978-1983, MoMA exhibition catalog, NY, NY (2017), Studio Magazine, Coloring Page, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, NY (2016), Mein heimliches Auge (1994) Tubingen, Germany. BERLIN (1986) , I.S.C.A. Quarterly, NY, NY (1983)

Chaiklin’s work is in several Public Collections including the: Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL, Cleveland Institute of Art, Artist Book Collection, Cleveland, Ohio, The Fashion Moda Archives, Fales/Special Collection, New York University, New York, NY. The Museum of Modern Art, Library Archives, New York, NY, The Museum of Modern Art, Franklin Furnace Artist’s Book Collection, New York, NY, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY, The Feminist Art Project Archives, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, The Lower East Side Printshop Archive of Artist’s Prints, NY, NY, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, and the Women’s Studio Workshop Archive of Artist’s Prints, Rosendale, NY.

Statement

Cultured Pearls 100 Portraits of Artists + Curators (2017-2020).
The Cultured Pearls project is a collection of one hundred portraits of real women that have inspired my work and that I know personally. Respecting this community of women, I portray each women demanding attention by depiction her looking directly out at the viewer.
Each portrait is sourced from photographs on social media, or from photos that I have taken of the women.
It is important to paint the essence of each artist or curator by drawing their personal stance, while also considering each of their various hairstyles and fashion choices.

The first colors selecting for each painting reflect their skin tones. Next I paint their clothes keeping in mind their own fashion palette, as well as the overall color scheme of the project. Lastly I paint with black ink the facial details, and an outline of their hair and bodies. These individual portraits express my gratitude to each women. As a women artist, I am making a powerful statement of the female gaze with this group of one hundred portraits of intersectional female identified artists and curators.