Amy Lay’s confidence doesn’t require perfection. She’s sure enough in her artistic vision to “show her work,” so to speak, allowing the trial and error of her efforts to remain visible in completed wildlife paintings.
“I have lots of mess ups, but I think that’s one of the good things about my style,” Lay says. “Notice all the pencil line. You’ll see three or four different tries to make the shoulder or the back; it’s intensive with the drawing, that helps me find the right shape. I want that to show. I want the drawing to show, it’s like the bones of the work.”
Mudcats, oil, 18 x 24”
The foxes, horses and wolves depicted in Lay’s gestural artworks emerge as if from a dream. Or a memory. They do. Eschewing photography or plein air sketches, Lay relies on snapshots held in her mind from many years of direct observation in the field to inform her paintings.
“The most important thing is the way it moves,” Lay explains. “If you understand how [an animal is] jointed and how they move, you can pose them any way you want. I study their movement more than anything.”
Flyfox, oil, 36 x 24”
Horsepower, oil, 24 x 48”
Dramatic red highlights, groups of three and self-possessed animals staring back at their onlookers feature in Lay’s paintings. Regarding them creates the same “who’s watching who?” sensation experienced in nature when the observed recognizes the observer establishing a connection.
Lay’s many years working in watercolor are apparent in the oil paintings she’s producing today. Fusing the looseness and ephemerality of watercolor with the gravity and texture of oil results in a unique artistic expression, revealing as much about the artist as her subject.
Trinity, oil, 36 x 48”
“I was very reliant on that wash with the water. I use an oil wash now and then I go back in and layer up thicker layers after I do the oil wash. That’s how I can still use the pencil in there like a watercolor,” Lay describes of her process, which also includes mark making with graphite and charcoal. “It’s still very much an oil painting and it seals like an oil painting, but it’s a thinner oil painting.”
Beneath the Blues, a one-woman show of Lay’s most recent paintings opens May 6, running through June 27, at Manitou Galleries’ Palace Avenue location in Santa Fe. —
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