English artist Amy Dury paints people by extracting figures from photographs from the pre-digital age found in family photographs or home movies. She is most often drawn to peoples’ roles in society, the hierarchies and dynamics of power. Amy says: “Our history instructs, seduces and tethers us, and I look to use paint to examine these emotive memories, which reflect current themes and tensions in contemporary life.” Amy was born in London, England in 1971, one of four children, she has two brothers and a sister. Her mother Susan was a teacher and creative in textile art. Her father John worked in the City. Amy studied for her BA in Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art graduating in 1997 before earning an MA in Fine Art at the University of Brighton. Prior to moving to Scotland where she met her husband, Amy studied in Belfast during The Troubles - the Northern Ireland Conflict - which was an uneasy time with the constant threat of bombing. When the couple moved to Brighton, Amy pursued her love of art by teaching before focusing on her painting. Of her art, she says: “I like looking at historical, vintage imagery. I feel very connected but I didn’t even live in those times and I don’t know who they are. I feel very tender, very emotional… moved by their lives, especially when you watch them on home movies and you see them walking and talking and laughing. It’s very moving and you feel reconnected and you feel part of the change of people, of society, of culture. When I make the paintings I feel like I’m connecting with that and I’m reaching something about my own experience now or the current experience through looking back into the past.” Amy divides her time as Head of Art at a Sixth Form College in Brighton and painting in her home studio. She is married to Peter, an artist and architect, whose father was a Scottish landscape artist. The couple have two children and live in Brighton.

Amy’s website: https://www.amydury.com/
Instagram: @amy_dury

Favorite female artists:
Kaye Donachie
Jennifer Packer
Jenifer Pochinski
Lydia Petitt
Lynette Yiadem Boyake

Amy’s playlist:
Kate Bush
T-Rex, REM
The Smiths

Host: Chris Stafford
Produced by Hollowell Studios
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