Artist Feature: Brett Amory
"Where do we go when we are not in the Now?"
In 2001, Brett Amory began the series of paintings titled Waiting, now made up of hundreds. In this ongoing series, he aims to depict the space we occupy when we are not in the now. This space all too familiar, where our minds are busy, obsessing with what has already transpired, our fantasies of others, of what will be next or what was, but not what is. Disconnecting us from the now.
The subjects and backdrops in his work are based off of photographs he takes documenting the everyday life in his neighborhood; the shops and homes, the ordinary people, the day to day happenings. From his photos, he then searches for what fits together to him. He explains, “It’s all based on feelings. The emotion that the places give off and the emotion that people give off, and when they have the same emotion, I put them together.” Once paired to evoke this emotion he’s working to capture, he strips out many details of the scene, playing with negative space, isolating his subjects and only a few supporting elements.
“In our age of distraction, being in the present is difficult to achieve outside of meditation practice, it requires heightened cognitive awareness and clear mental space, often prevented by constant internal dialogue, preoccupation with memories of the past and/or concern for the future. This body of work attempts to visually represent this concept of disconnection and anticipation, conveying the idea of transient temporality that exists in most moments of our daily lives.”
Images are courtesy of Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York, NY.
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Brett Amory was born in 1975 in Chesapeake, Virginia and is currently based in Oakland, California. In 2005, Amory received a BFA from Academy of Arts University in San Francisco. Amory’s work has been exhibited in galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and New York. In 2012, The San Francisco Bay Guardian named him artist of the year with a cover story. He has also been featured in publications such as The Huffington Post and New American Paintings.