Amy Bernays

The Overseers, Painting, Acrylic on Canvas

2021

Somehow it is easier to overpopulate a little painting and get away with it that in a big canvas. This little painting is crowded with life. The menagerie is my daughter’s depiction of her world, the animals within it. It is blued together with the depiction of a small crowd of children looking at the precious thing. We can half make out their forms. Still a little undefined, as things are when you are only half grown up. I like to paint the happy in life. Looking for those thoughts or moments that bring me joy and define my life. I paint my children. Not just their visage, but their being. Their play, their imaginative world as well as their real world. In this series I have the kids paint...

I love to wonder as deeply as they do in play. The world comes alive with the possibilities that you put out there. In my children’s play, one will announce a reality; “we are fl...

This is Rules and Regulations. I enjoy his play and humor while also contemplating the human condition of childhood. I am to perfect the skill is in setting up the framework that th...

This one is more back and white. It’s about how we teach our children. Introduce them to powerful tools. We direct them to use it; have fun with it, don’t do harm with it. ::...

Retreating from the stress and chaos of the last year, I created another landscape; populated by an army of friendly creatures. Here the burdens of coronavirus, climate change, and political division are dismissed by hot pink kittens that arc gracefully through meter showers and owls that bury into beds of daffodils. In this place worry is edged out by the fantastic and mystical snails trail neon candy canes through the scorched earth. The apocalyptic is supplanted by the surreal and the allegorical. Anxiety followed me. The escapist reflects and distorts its shadow world, the real, a funhouse mirror...

KEJ is a French artist born in 1959 who lives & works in Paris, France. He is considered to belong to the movement of Figuration Libre & Outsider Art....

This work was one of Long’s earliest compositions as an artist. Even earlier in his artistic career, Long was interested in exploring the intersection of various media, branching out into new innovative spaces. This work demonstrates the technique and forms at play that have since germinated into Long’s signature style. Bert L. Long Jr., was self-taught artist, was born in 1940 in Texas, grew up the Houston’s historic Fifth Ward and received his formal education from UCLA. Following a career as a successful master chef, Long decided to devote himself entirely to art in the late 1970’s. He began to explore folk art and assemblage to create a unique body of work, attracting the attention of Jim Harithas, then Director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and artists John Alexander, Salvatore Scarpitta and James Surls. His life spanned an era of radical change in the American social climate, the influence of which can be seen clearly in his work. Long’s paintings and sculptures incorporate a high level of skill and sophisticated knowledge of art history, along with complex philosophical and social issues.  Long describes the philosophy behind his work as "a quest to help people diagnose their inner self," believing his art to be "the vehicle to help facilitate the process." “As artists we have the obligation to provide the world with art which communicates as truth. I believe that art has the power to heal our souls of their afflictions. I try to create art which helps to diagnose the prevalent conditions within our societies, hopefully providing an insightfulness which will help us all become brothers and sisters united in equality and compassion”                                       - Bert L. Long, Jr. The late Peter Marzio, former Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, said of Bert Long during the major retrospective of Long’s work at the museum: “Bert Long does not avert his gaze from that which is painful, but as [his artworks] testify, he also brings a spirit of joy and redemption to his art. We can all learn from this great artist.” Over Long’s 33-year career as a painter, sculptor, and photographer, he had several solo exhibitions at respected museums and was awarded many significant awards including the National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1987 and the prestigious international Prix de Rome fellowship in 1990. Other notable awards of Long’s include the Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts Artist of the Year Award in 2009, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Emergency Assistance Grant in 1997, the Houston Art League Texas Artist of the Year in 1990, the NEA Visual Artists Fellowship Grant, 1987 and the Bemis Foundation Residency in 1998. His work can be seen in over 100 private and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, the El Paso Museum of Art, and the Instituto de Bachillerato in Spain. With a recent solo exhibition at the Houston Museum of African American Culture and an exhibition overseas which is pending featuring his work, plus interest from several national museums, Bert L. Long Jr. continues to be recognized as an important African American artist throughout Texas, nationally and internationally. Bert L. Long, Jr. "Untitled" 1977 Acrylic and Paper Collage on Canvas...

KEJ is a French artist born in 1959 who lives & works in Paris, France. He is considered to belong to the movement of Figuration Libre & Outsider Art. His works are referenced in the...