About The Work
In this painting, Amy Hill counterposes the contemporary subject matter with early American aesthetics. She draws inspiration from the highly illustrative early American painters who depicted mostly children using simple lines, sharply defined forms, and carefully formed compositions. Like her predecessors she gives an equal level of attention to all areas of the canvas and leaves an absence of expressive brushwork, thereby retaining the naïveté and hand-made quality of the works. She then adds opposing contemporary references that serve to reflect where the world is heading. The flattened perspective and strong use of pattern further add to her reference to American folk art, with each figure earnestly posed in the foreground of a distorted picture plane. The figures gaze intensely at the viewer, creating an attraction and connection to their worlds. These worlds depict both natural and manufactured elements that question the merits of a modern life infused with technology. Hill asks if we are sacrificing starry skies and green fields with fresh air for unnatural city life in a modernized world that lures and seduces us with cutting-edge gadgets and the empty promises of corporations for security and happiness. She visualizes the push and pull between nature and technology, and feels a perpetual challenge to find a balance between the two.
Courtesy of Front Room Gallery
Painting
oil on canvas
36.00 x 30.00 in
91.4 x 76.2 cm
signed on reverse
About The Work
In this painting, Amy Hill counterposes the contemporary subject matter with early American aesthetics. She draws inspiration from the highly illustrative early American painters who depicted mostly children using simple lines, sharply defined forms, and carefully formed compositions. Like her predecessors she gives an equal level of attention to all areas of the canvas and leaves an absence of expressive brushwork, thereby retaining the naïveté and hand-made quality of the works. She then adds opposing contemporary references that serve to reflect where the world is heading. The flattened perspective and strong use of pattern further add to her reference to American folk art, with each figure earnestly posed in the foreground of a distorted picture plane. The figures gaze intensely at the viewer, creating an attraction and connection to their worlds. These worlds depict both natural and manufactured elements that question the merits of a modern life infused with technology. Hill asks if we are sacrificing starry skies and green fields with fresh air for unnatural city life in a modernized world that lures and seduces us with cutting-edge gadgets and the empty promises of corporations for security and happiness. She visualizes the push and pull between nature and technology, and feels a perpetual challenge to find a balance between the two.
Courtesy of Front Room Gallery
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