Amy Hill Spring Break 2022

“The Age of Delightenment” curated by Kathleen Vance and Daniel Aycock at SPRING/BREAK Booth #1016 features modern day renaissance portraits by Amy Hill. Hill revives the styles of the Renaissance and makes them her own by exploring themes traceable to the present day. Through portraiture, a genre that runs throughout art history, she utilizes a variety of poses, gestures, fashion and modern day accoutrements to make social, psychological and anthropological statements. Humor emerges through the juxtaposition of contemporary fashion and historical figures.

Using a traditional oil glazing technique, this series of paintings reveals the individuality of her subjects through style of dress and ornamentation. Their rigid positioning and formal poses accentuate the universal struggle to conform to the social constraints of the day. The juxtaposition of modern dress with primitive poses questions their placement in time, creating a tension both eerie and unsettling. 

Also included in this exhibition are three portraits featuring creatures with bird’s heads wearing ornate renaissance clothing, another juxtaposition, from a series called "Hybirds" that addresses such modern day phenomena as hybridization and intermarriage, the homogenizing of the contemporary world.

Amy Hill received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and studied at New York University. She has received grants from the Peter S. Reed Foundation and Art Matters and a studio grant from the Elizabeth Foundation. Hill received nominations for the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has attended residencies at Byrdcliffe in Woodstock, NY, The Virginia Center For the Creative Arts, and Cummington Community of Artists in Massachusetts. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, Artnet Magazine, artinfo, and Cover Magazine, as well as other national and international publications. She currently lives and works in New York.