AMY BEAGER
Name: Amy Beager
Age: 33
Birthplace: UK
Home: Chelmsford, UK
Discipline: Painting
Cure for Heartache, 2021, acrylic and oil on linen canvas
How did you start your art practice?
I have loved painting since I can remember and wanted to be an artist when I was studying art at school. It was partly a lack of confidence and knowledge of how to be an artist that led me to do my BA in Fashion Design. After working in the fashion industry for seven years, I quit my job as a womenswear designer and worked freelance whilst building up my art practice. It was always my dream to live as an artist and I felt that it was the right time for me to try.
Does fashion influence your paintings?
I suppose so. What I’ve learned about color and texture translates to my work now. Also, in fashion, there was a lot of sourcing imagery involved: researching online, visiting exhibitions or going on shopping trips to search for inspiration for the next collection. With my paintings, I work in a similar way, using second-hand images I find from fashion photography, art history, cemetery sculptures, theatres or movies. The principles of design and art are similar - it’s about taking bits from all different sources of inspiration that you are gathering up (consciously and subconsciously) and creating narratives in your own visual language.
What influenced at first the figures you paint?
For my earlier works (2019%2020), I was initially inspired by reading the memoir of Isadora Duncan, My life. She was influenced by Greek sculptures, mythology and beauty ideals, which led me to start my own research in that field and learn more for my own inspiration. Mythological tales became interesting to me because they are stories that combine realities in terms of emotion and meaning, but the characters are extraordinary and otherworldly.
Which topics does your work focus on now?
I have recently been exploring ideas of desire, longing and love, death and loneliness. Figures are often reduced down through variations of brushstrokes and swooping clouds of colour evoking a dreamlike and subjective reality. I have also been featuring beds a lot in my paintings, as a gateway to dreams or portals into another world. It’s a place where you experience love and security, but also loneliness, loss and death. I am currently working on new pieces around themes of transformation, transcendence, renewal, rebirth and the unreal or charmed that will be shown at upcoming exhibitions this Spring.
How do you define your artistic search and practice in three words?
Transcending, Experimental and Intense.
Wherein lies the beauty for you today?
Beauty and love are things that I regard highly in life, and are perhaps what most people long for in one way or another? I’m not referring to ‘beauty’ as a stereotype or societal standard. Things are determined as ‘beautiful’ by a person because of an attraction, a desire, or a positive emotional connection. In turn, notions of beauty relate to feelings of love and belonging. Mythology, fairy tales, tragic love stories and movies that I love often have themes of unrequited love or death. For me, this idea of loss of love is heartbreakingly beautiful.
Pheonix, 2021, acrylic and oil bar on paper