Last year, we had a wedding in Chicago.
Between the rehearsal dinner Friday night and the actual affair Saturday night, we found ourselves with some time to kill. We are in Chicago every year for Thanksgiving, so we know our way around town pretty well. So we grabbed some of the cousins and headed towards the gallery district.
I found myself intrigued by works by an artist named Amy Casey at ZG Gallery. For somewhat obvious reasons, it just spoke to me.
Mrs Big Picture must have noticed my interest, cause when we exchanged gifts on New Year’s Eve (that’s another long story), one of my presents was an original work of art called “Coalescing.” (You can see it below).
If you click around Amy Casey’s site, you will notice that over the past few years, much of her work involved the fragility of the Real Estate market. She had been doing these sorts of paintings before the housing crisis (her comments are after the jump).
Anyway, I found the work fascinating. I suspect you will also . . .
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Amy Casey:
For about the last ten years, I’ve been experiencing a sporadically recurring dream about the end of the world. Animals stampeding and buildings falling into dust around me, I wake up in a panic and with a heavy sense of inevitability. Although I’m not trying to recreate this dream in my work, I think that like my dream, my paintings reflect my view of the nervous state of affairs the world seems to be in.
Inspired by natural and unnatural disasters, personal fiascoes and the never ending stream of bad news coming in from the media, a relentless mob of curious plant-like creatures and other disasters have swarmed over the painted landscapes, threatening the creatures and life within. Like us, the creatures in my work stumble through the best they can; given their circumstances. Acting out of vulnerability they try to create security but sometimes, like us, end up kicking their own asses. I am fascinated by the resilience of life. Every disaster is followed by rebirth, where we hike up our boots, duct tape our lives back together and try to cobble together a “plan b” out of what remains.
My paintings document my love of both the urban landscape, and small twisted creatures.
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