Amy Wright
Amy Wright had a full creative career outside painting. She worked in the Colour and Trim Department at General Motors Holden, made ceramics, designed textiles, did screen printing and ran a floristry studio for weddings and events. She returned to painting after moving to regional Victoria and becoming a mother. As a child she painted watercolor posies with her grandmother. Now she paints abandoned, untamed landscapes on large canvases, mostly in acrylic, charcoal and pastel. She also has a wallpaper and fabrics collaboration with Deus Ex Gardenia in London.
Q: You came to painting through textile design and floristry. What was the road here?
A: I've had a diverse and full creative career, working across sculpture, ceramics, automotive (Colour and Trim Department for General Motors Holden), textile design, and screen printing. I also ran my own small studio and shop before establishing a floristry studio specialising in weddings and events. Moving to regional Victoria and becoming a mother brought me back to painting.
Q: What do you see in an overgrown, untended landscape?
A: The colours, the textures, the repeating patterns; the clever systems and structures that plants create as they grow. The way plants position themselves to draw what they need, showing the dominant hierarchy of the plant world.
Q: What did floristry bring into your painting?
A: I have always painted botanicals - from a very early age I would paint watercolour posies of flowers with my grandmother - and I am always drawn to the landscape and plants as a subject matter. It was thrilling to work directly with the flowers and plants themselves. The greatest skill it taught me was in the process of the work. It honed my ability to be disciplined and persistent; it taught me tenacity and problem-solving. Working with a material that has a shelf life meant I had to work fast and work within its limitations. It also allowed me the opportunity to work with shape, texture and colour in a way that has become common to my painting process. I was working in a 3-dimensional version of my paintings.
Q: You put a painting together the way you'd make a collage. Where does a piece start?
A: When I refer to collage I mean this in a conceptual sense, where sections are pieced together and textures and patterns are interlaced. I like to work large, as I paint at 'life size', as I feel I am IN the landscapes. I vaguely plot out the composition, feeling my way across the surface as if I am passing through the landscape in my mind. I work mainly from memory, but I am also a compulsive photo documenter, and will often start with a fast flick through a series of images, to give me a starting point.
The canvas evolves without a plan. In the same way as wandering through a landscape, where you unearth unexpected details, I work across the canvas and let each section decide the next. This often reveals patterns, textures and colour combinations that have in a sense 'grown' from the mediums and processes used on the canvas.
Q: Your paintings hang in homes and collections around the world. What does that mean to you?
A: I am honoured that people want to live with my work and support my practice. Myself, being a collector of objects - I am a maximalist more than a minimalist! - I surround myself with objects, paintings, textiles, etc., that hold meaning. Everything in my home has a story and I love that a small piece of my story is in the homes and collections of so many people around the world.
My style of painting 'suggests' the botanical world without depicting it realistically. My greatest joy is when a painting finds its owner, and they have seen or felt something in the work that resonates for them personally. I love it when people look at my work and can see their own story in it. It resonated with them, because it elicits a memory, or an experience or something that feels familiar.
Q: What's on the horizon for you?
A: I am busy in the studio! With thanks to my wonderful collectors, I have many shows, launches and fairs happening in 2027. Next year I will be showing across North America, Europe and UK, and my home country, Australia, with my representing galleries. Many new works are coming! With this comes more travel and I hope to be able to be present at some of these events around the world to meet some of my collectors in real time. I have a wallpaper and fabrics collaboration that has just launched with Deus Ex Gardenia in London, which I am excited to see develop! Watch this space!
