Omaha Acrylic Artist Amy R. Peterson
Painter Uses Canvases for Experimentation
It’s probably safe to say Amy R. Peterson is not getting her deposit back from her apartment complex. Never mind the daily-ware-and-tare, the kitchen table looks like Jackson Pollock and her blender sat down for a creative session. It’s just how she likes it.
Painting as Therapy
“Painting for me is therapy,” she said. “It’s what I feel and see—it’s more of an emotion.”
While she's brief and somewhat mysterious about her own feelings, she does admit that human relationships have recently helped pour the energy and sometimes hurt onto the canvas. Finding the time between her manager job at a local favorite coffee hangout, too, is difficult. It can almost be manic in terms of her progress, but she has a spirited desire to challenge her own abilities and visions.
Recipe for Art
Her pieces, like her love for coming up with her own baking recipes, reflect a work-in progress style. Layers upon layers of paint are caked together, with the top perpetually swirling new colors and bursts of energy.
“It’s like a science experiement,” Peterson said, her passion evident. “I want to see how the paint reacts—I pour really think paint, and then a really think paint. The thin paint sinks below, taking on a life of its own. I have some control, but what really happens with the paint, I have nothing to do with.”
She's pressing to get her art seen in a variety of settings and studios, and it has been difficult to gain experience. It seems, that, a vicious cycle has engulfed her--where she can't gain experience without having her name on an exhibit wall. Peterson has had some showings in the local coffee chain, as well as a few benefit shows.
Natural Tendencies
Growing up in Griswold, Iowa, a small town east of Omaha, Peterson’s love for nature and quiet disposition has had a positive effect on her art. Her natural tendancy to edit her own work, added with her fascination of seeing how natural things react in an un-controlled environment, bridges together for abstract creations.
One of her main influences is artist Andy Goldsworth, a sculptor, photographer and environmentalist living in Scotland. He is known for his profound land-art. Peterson admires his keen patience and committment to form and reaction.
"It's fascinating to me that he would spend all that time--for something that gets destroyed or wears away," she said. "It's very Buddhist to me."
She hopes for the same reaction to her own pieces--large or small canvases with mostly hues of blues, oranges, green, purples (her favorite color) and splashes of reds and other primary colors.
No Titles Needed
“I really like to hear what people see in my paintings,” she said. “That’s why I don’t title them. If I say it looks like a flower, I don’t want them to look for that.”
Finding the right color recipe
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