Amy, a first-time progressive mother, turns the personal political by confronting the powerful forces pulling mother and child apart. Whether by government intervention, climate disaster, or devastating illness, the threat of separation looms large in her deceptively sparkly works. Amy’s bruised, broken, and frightful female figures illuminate a truth rarely spoken but tacitly acknowledged by mothers and caregivers the world over: that true love is determined by a willingness to sacrifice—and that sacrifice comes with a steep cost.
By bathing her monstrous figures in rainbow colors and glitter, Amy reimagines our syrupy obsession with happy endings and fairytales as a protective filter shielding us from the crushing realities of that sacrifice. Her intensive layering process suggests an aggression rarely assigned to maternal figures in patriarchal cultures. There’s a magical, elusive quality to her works, one that abandons piety and quiet suffering for the uproarious joy and razor-sharp pain of motherhood.
