Deer, 2010, mixed media on canvas
The quiet subtlety of Amy Thompson’s work belies an inner phoenix, a hidden knowledge that glints at the heart of mythic symbols. Composed of photographs and images gleaned from vintage catalogues, encyclopedias and other ephemera, her collages simultaneously evoke a familiar world—a bucolic realm of birds, insects, moonlight and natural phenomena—and invest it with a perplexing symbolic potential. In the strange inter-zone of these images, the moon flips upside-down, birds have the bodies of girl-children, starlight comes down to earth, and the fragile innocence of childhood haunts the night sky. At once mutely attractive and profoundly disconcerting, these quiet, inexplicable images make us wonder.”
Glint
These pieces are a librarian’s daydreams; little glimpses of life, awaiting their escape from between dusty book jackets within the towering stacks. The librarian works quietly to herself, inputting, organizing, re-shelving, following Dewey decimal’s strict order. These are meant to be her inner world, a private menagerie.
Bird Girls
Inspired in part by fairy tales, these works depict delicate bird-girl creatures plucked from a magical world. This surreal co-mingling of human and animal explores a world shared between nature and imagination and creates a sense of strange enchantment.
