Mixed-Media Artist Amy J Dyck Makes Peace With Her Inner Demons
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes).”
Deemed “trashy, profane, and obscene” on its publication, Walt Whitman’s most meme-able line is something of a proverb on social media these days. Nestled into the stanzas of “Song of Myself” from Whitman’s seminal Leaves of Grass, the line could act as mixed-media artist Amy J Dyck’s personal mantra.
“In the mysterious internal landscape, where our experiences are not solid, knowable objects, where our feelings come and go, and where our deeper selves reside, my work explores what it feels like to be human, alive, limited, with all the vulnerability, yearning, resilience, and complexity inherent inside us,” Amy writes in her artist statement.
Working in collage, painting, and sculpture, Amy experiments with oil, wood, and paper until a complex image emerges from the puzzle pieces. Her focus is on women and the intricate, interior lives they often lead. “The creatures in the work are nuanced and strange, broken and fierce, and filled with conflicting parts as they figure out how to move forward and fight back in a world that can be rife with problems,” she notes.
Surrounded by ghosts, monsters, and magical beings, the women in Amy’s work battle personal demons with a subtle, restrained courage more akin to resilience than domination or subjugation. Her work hints at a deep-seated melancholy present in the female experience, a hidden struggle that suggests a willingness to make peace with the devil inside all of us.
“Parts of us can hold difficult memories and become protective of us and cause us to lash out; others hold our hopes or joy, others yet we may not understand,” Amy muses. “These parts of us can come into conflict, such as when we feel torn between two choices.” Refusing to choose, Amy corrals a glut of personality traits—both ugly and beautiful—into each work, creating nuanced portraits of women who rebuff the simplistic narrative thrust upon them.
New Book By Katie Love
From Cult To Comedy, A Memoir, by Katie Love
![Author Katie Love: The Comedian Turning Heartbreak Into Humor [Podcast] cover](https://notrealart.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/KatieLove_TwoTickets_3480e51b580ddab4420c3075f139bc39_2000-400x209.jpg)
The year is 1970. The horror soap opera “Dark Shadows” is all the rage, the Vietnam War is raging and nine-year-old Katie, an imaginative and independent latch-key kid, comes home from school to discover her mother’s suicide.
Taken in by her older sister who has recently become a Jehovah’s Witness, Katie is shown an illustration from a bible picture book featuring wild animals peacefully lounging by a pool of water, surrounded by happy people picking fruit. An enticing offer is made: “Katie, this is Paradise. Do you want to see Mom again, happy and living forever? All you have to do is follow all of Jehovah’s commandments and you can be with Mom again.”
Mom happy and living forever? Two tickets to Paradise, please!
So begins Katie’s zealous quest to attain perfection and entrance into a utopian world which promises peace, love, and happiness. She discovers a much darker world. “Two Tickets to Paradise, from Cult to Comedy” tells the hilarious and heartbreaking story of an earnest, bible-toting kid intent on saving the world, and follows her metamorphosis into a boisterous comedian intent on saving herself through the healing powers of humor.
“My work explores what it feels like to be human, alive, limited, with all the vulnerability, yearning, resilience, and complexity inherent inside us.” — Amy J Dyck
Amy J Dyck: Website | Instagram | Purchase Work
All photos published with permission of the artist(s).
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