Amy Lay is not your garden-variety wildlife artist. She does not work from reference photos. Carefully rendering fur and feathers doesn’t interest her either. Instead, Lay’s singular style reveals foundations in drafting and observation, movement and gesture. 
Solitaire, oil on canvas, 48 x 36"
“I think I’m just becoming more and more rebellious as I get older,” says Lay as she prepares for her one-woman show at Mountain Trails in Jackson, Wyoming. She notes that gallery owner Adam Warner has played a pivotal role in her ability to take risks in her career. “He lets artists be artists. I get to kind of experiment, and I think my style needs that,” says Lay, an artist known as much for her hand as for her brush. She’s created a mode of mark making that incorporates graphite and charcoal drawings into lively compositions punctuated by washes of oil. “I wanted to do an oil painting that looked and felt a lot like a watercolor, but had the permanency of oils,” she explains.
“I don’t know anybody else that paints like her. She’s really developed a great technique,” says Warner. “She’s taking a lot of concepts and integrating them in ways that might not necessarily be realistic in nature, but they bring together this beautiful scene.”
Rebel, oil and charcoal on canvas, 48 x 60"
“I don’t really care too much if it isn’t perfect anatomically. I want it to be this gestural animal. I want it to come more from me than from a photograph,” says Lay. “Wildlife art got cornered for a while,” she says. “I fought it. I didn’t want to do that.” Returning to techniques that predate photography, Lay studied animals from life, learning anatomy and locomotion on the fly. “Once you figure out how they move, you can draw anything,” she explains.
For this latest body of work, Lay is taking her practice a step further, incorporating multiple species into one piece. “She’s really evolved as far as subject matter. She’s still a wildlife painter, but a lot of her scenes have gotten a bit more modern,” says Warner of their decade-long working relationship. “I’m looking at a painting now where there are three wolves and about eight owls, and they’re all sort of harmoniously balanced together.”
“I get bored with order, I guess,” says Lay, who prefers working from a place of instinct and expression over meticulous planning.
Rouge, oil on canvas, 11 x 14”
“I have a general idea of my animals and the gesture, and that’s all I know. I just let it go.I like not knowing what’s going to happen and then being surprised. That’s kind of the fun of it.”
It’s clear Lay is having fun. And so are her collectors. The former Jackson local usually spends a few extra days in town during her show to connect with friends and fans. Then, she returns a few weeks later for Western Visions at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. “She’s developed a tremendous following, and people love meeting her,” says Warner. “She’s just refreshing.”
“I feel like I’m really hitting my stride,” says Lay, “feeling like I really belong in the art world after all this time.” —
Powered by Froala Editor
