Brett Amory
bret​ta​mory​.com
San Fran­cisco, CA.

Brett Amory is a San Fran­cisco based painter. Amory got his train­ing at the Acad­emy of Art where he earned a Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts in Paint­ing in 2005. Shortly after grad­u­at­ing, he devel­oped the “Wait­ing series” which, “depicts the urban individual’s yearn­ing for pres­ence and the seem­ing impos­si­bil­ity of attain­ing it. The paint­ings por­tray com­muters in tran­sit immersed in either a quiet, even hope­ful state or, alter­nately, an anguish of unful­filled antic­i­pa­tion.” Amory rose to the inter­na­tional art scene, with a solo show at London’s Out­siders Gallery.

Curbs and Stoops: Where does a paint­ing begin for you?

Brett Amory: It all starts with aware­ness. Being aware of my sur­round­ings and feel­ing the peo­ple in these sur­round­ings is where every paint­ing starts. Im always tak­ing pic­tures of places and peo­ple. When it comes time to put together a group of paint­ings I go through my cam­era and find places that have a cer­tain feel­ing. When I find some­thing I like I import the image into pho­to­shop and start the elim­i­na­tion process. Once I have a com­po­si­tion I like I go back and find a per­son that shares the same feel­ing as the envi­ron­ment and marry the two.

Curbs and Stoops: Describe that process — going back and forth between the paint­ing and the photoshop?

Brett Amory: Every paint­ing starts in Pho­to­shop. I mon­tage pic­tures together based on shared emo­tion. I used to start with a quick ges­ture paint­ing, take a pic­ture of the paint­ing import it back into the Pho­to­shop file which would change the orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion. I would repeat this process a few times. The paint­ing would change the dig­i­tal image and vice versa. I stopped doing that process about a year ago. My process is more straight for­ward now.

Curbs and Stoops: Is this away of speed­ing up the com­po­si­tion and solv­ing the prob­lems of paint­ing in the phys­i­cal mak­ing of the image?

Brett Amory: Pho­to­shop got me into paint­ing. It has always been a part of my process. Instead of paint­ing a bunch of small stud­ies I work out the com­po­si­tions in Pho­to­shop first. I know if a paint­ing is going to work before I begin.

Curbs and Stoops: There is a kind of flux in the urban spaces that are described in your work. Are your paint­ings reflec­tions on exist­ing urban con­di­tions or are they invented worlds?

Brett Amory: All my work starts with a par­tic­u­lar place and per­son that I’ve taken a pic­ture of. Usu­ally places I am famil­iar with and see every­day. How­ever I strip the pho­tog­ra­phy down to its essen­tial ele­ments. Its not nec­es­sar­ily impor­tant that the viewer iden­ti­fies with where the place is but instead they iden­tify with the emo­tion. I hope by tak­ing away and hav­ing neg­a­tive space the viewer focuses on the emo­tion first and the aes­thetic later.

Curbs and Stoops: The work exists in between the real and the sub­lime, there are traces of mate­r­ial con­crete­ness, yet the fig­ures are oddly dis­placed. Can you explain where those feel­ings come from? Are they a result of the med­i­ta­tive sub­jects you chose to study?

Brett Amory: My work in a sense is about a new con­scious aware­ness. Most of us do not live in the present moment and while we wait our minds are rac­ing. Our egos are con­stantly run­ning the show. We think of the past and the future and are rarely present. I look for peo­ple that are deep in thought in attempt to bring to light the state of mind most of us are con­stantly in. By hav­ing neg­a­tive space I hope to bring the viewer in and evoke a calm pres­ence while look­ing at the work.

Curbs and Stoops: This is what you are describ­ing in the “Wait­ing Series.”, where did the series come from?

Brett Amory: I started the ‘Wait­ing’ series in 2000. I was work­ing in Emeryville and liv­ing in San Fran­cisco, so I was com­mut­ing via BART. I became really inter­ested in how peo­ple looked in the morn­ing espe­cially on Mon­day after the week­end. I noticed how every­one seemed to be some­where else, not at all in the present. I also started notic­ing a dis­con­nect. BART would be packed shoul­der to shoul­der but there would be no com­mu­ni­ca­tion and min­i­mal eye con­tact. Back then the series was all about BART and I was tak­ing a more tra­di­tional approach to paint­ing. I wanted to be a more intu­itive artist so I stopped the series in 2003 and exper­i­mented with a few dif­fer­ent types of medi­ums and styles of paint­ing. In the sum­mer of 2007 I came back to the ‘Wait­ing’ series but the idea and my approach had evolved from all the exper­i­ment­ing. I started doing paint­ings char­ac­ter­ized by a highly graphic and reduc­tive envi­ron­ment inhab­ited by one or more fig­ures. I thought by strip­ping out the envi­ron­ment and replac­ing it with this over ster­il­ized graphic world it would invoke a lone­some psy­cho­log­i­cal state and the work would come across as being more than just a guy wait­ing for the bus or some­one sit­ting in traffic.

Curbs and Stoops: You exper­i­mented with putting some of those por­traits in the street, orig­i­nal oil paint­ings on butcher block. What was the urge to put this kind of work out there?

Brett Amory: Ive only put stuff on the street a cou­ple of times, so I would never con­sider myself a street artist espe­cially know­ing there are guys get­ting up every day. I did it just to do some­thing new and to get out of my stu­dio. I have a lot of friends that go out so just being around them inspired me to try it. I put up orig­i­nal pieces cause I can’t afford to print out large work in color. I wanted to put up work that was going to catch atten­tion. So what bet­ter way to catch atten­tion than to put up some big ass fig­ures ren­dered in oil.

Curbs and Stoops: You just had your first inter­na­tional solo show at Lazarides Gallery in Lon­don this Jan­u­ary. Describe the expe­ri­ence of show­ing abroad for the first time?

Brett Amory: Lazarides is great! They were absolutely great. Very solid group of indi­vid­u­als. It was prob­a­bly the best show I’ve done yet. Lon­don is really cool I could see myself liv­ing there.

Curbs and Stoops: I remem­ber you telling me that show­ing abroad was a goal of yours. Now that that is out of the way, what is the next step?

Brett Amory: To do it again and again.

Curbs and Stoops: How are you look­ing to chal­lenge your­self? Where do you see your paint­ings growing?

Brett Amory: All of my work is a part of the wait­ing series how­ever I like to think within the series are sub­series. When­ever I make new work for a show I con­sider the work a new series within the Wait­ing series. I always focus on some­thing new to fur­ther the series. It might be con­cep­tual or aes­thetic. I try not to repeat the same paint­ing twice. For me the most impor­tant part of mak­ing art is self evolution.