Brett Amory is one of my favourite artists and if you are not aware of his work, then have a look at his website and facebook or better yet one of his upcoming shows (details below).
After spending his teens skateboarding, incredibly, the 36-year-old painter only started drawing in his early twenties when he moved from Chesapeake, Virginia where he was raised to the Bay Area of San Francisco where he attended the Academy of Arts University.
“I was really bad at drawing and painting when I started,” Amory tells Bohomoth. “I didn’t start until I went to college and one of my tutors told me if I didn’t take more drawing classes then I would fail my class.
“So I started taking twice weekly and then daily drawing classes and improved pretty fast and became hooked. Because I’d learned the technicalities of drawing, when I went on to painting, although it’s a completely different medium, it was a lot easier in comparison.”
Now, Brett regularly has solo art shows around the world and is known for his stunning ‘Waiting’ series of oil paintings- which he first created in 2001 after he became inspired watching strangers on his daily commute by train and is a concept that has been evolving for the past decade.
The work depicts everyday people caught unawares that the painter has been watching whilst walking around his neighbourhood. They may be at a bus stop, at a café or in a shop doorway, passing time before they go on to the next part of their day. “Waiting is a state of mind” explains Amory. “While we wait most of us are not in the now. We are thinking of our past and anticipating the future.”
He purchased an iPhone last October and now takes hundreds of images, which he will whittle down to just twelve- which he then paints. Some he uploads to facebook and he can guage by the response he gets if his gut instinct they’ll make a great painting is right: “Usually the ones that get the most likes and comments are the ones I was planning to go on and paint,” he says.
Amory tells Bohomoth he’s a “workaholic” and admits he has to force himself to take time off and “just hang with friends or go for a walk.”
The artist rarely gets stuck for inspiration or motivation and says: “It’s more a case of I have so many ideas for creative concepts and it’s more a question of not having enough time to actually get around to doing them.”
Brett’s an incredibly industrious artist and is currently producing work for shows for next year at his Oakland based studio from where he regularly ‘live paints’ on Ustream (below- but follow him on facebook for updates).
If you’re on the West coast of America, you can see Brett in person at Thinkspace, 6009 Washington Blvd, Culver City California on 4th August from 5-9pm and his work and fellow artist Adam Caldwell’s is on show from then until 25th August.
And, his latest print from the Waiting series (below) will be released I released today is with Sebastian and Foster today and you can buy it here .
You can also purchase Brett’s work from here here and here - it’s very reasonably priced and, with Amory named one of Complex magazine’s 25 young painters you need to know - it will be an investment you won’t regret.
I love his paintings, they look like a memory. Hazy.
And I received my earrings! Thank you! Love them, they are massive, three times as big as I expected. Which is a good thing.
Oooh yay! glad you get em and love them! xxx and I LOVE Brett’s work. I cld totally become an art groupie…
Thank you. Brett captures stagnance. That is something special because the first instinct as a human is to try to create a narrative or story of some sort. Brett’s work stops you cold. You may go onto create a story but it’s the antithesis to instnct. We humans are very still a lot of the time.