About

Amy Hutcheson encourages her audience to get lost in the constantly shifting and changing structures of her abstract paintings. The abstract shapes have a strong figure-ground relationship that dance before the view’s eyes. Color, depth and play keep the audience finding new images and ideas every time they look at one of Amy’s paintingsThe first thing people say about Amy’s work is that it makes them happy. The next is they get continually drawn in and out of the work. They are always finding different things in the pieces. Amy states, 

“I never want to give my audience too much information. I want them to draw their own conclusions about my work and thereby creating their own experience with each piece. I would never expect the viewer’s experience with my paintings to be the same as what I experience. The audience is starting at the surface and excavating their way through my work. I am seeing the piece from the inside out. We meet somewhere in the middleAmy believes that abstraction must come from something tangible first, similar to the artists that influenced her, Lee Krasner, Willem DeKooning, and Georges Braque. For her it starts with an image, usually a portrait of someone, but as an idea not as an image. What is important is how the person or subject feels to Amy based on her readings, music, and images off the subject. For instance, her “Portrait of Joan” from 2018 is more about the colors of Joan Mitchell’s palette than what Joan looked like. It describes the inspiration that Amy cultivates from Mitchell’s work. It’s not just painters from which she draws her inspiration, it could be the simplest thing like a poem or a painting. All of life is an has an influence, both great and small. 

Currently living in Memphis, TN, Amy Hutcheson was born in 1972 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Amy created from the time she was little. Art was an outlet and has always been a way to express her ideas visually. She explored printmaking and illustration for several years until she landed in Memphis, Tennessee at Memphis College of Art in 2001 where she received her B.A. in Fine Arts. Although her focus was illustration, Amy worked on paintings all through her three years of school. “I always like to say I got two degrees, one in illustration and one in painting but I only paid for one. I would drag my paintings out in front of my teachers constantly looking for criticism and direction. I worked on both my required work and painting in my extra time.”. 

Amy has had several exhibitions since graduating MCA in 2004, including a solo exhibitions at Mongerson Gallery in Chicago, Ground Floor Gallery in Nashville as well as currently being represented in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Memphis, Tennessee and Birmingham, Alabama. Her work is also included in several private and corporate collections throughout the U.S.