Amy Casey

"High-rise," acrylic on panel, 48" x 36"

"Inner City," acrylic on panel, 30" x  30"

 "Lean To," acrylic on panel, 16" x 16"

 "Megalopolis," acrylic on panel, 36" x 60"

"Distant Lands," 2 color etching on paper, 8 ¼" x 10" (signed and numbered edition of 30)

It is rare for me to be able to see artwork that I post here in person. Which is unfortunate. It is often impossible to assess artwork online. Such was the case with Amy Casey's work which I first posted in July of 2009. As much as I enjoyed the imagery it was simply impossible to appreciate the delicate detail in her originals which I saw recently at Zg Gallery in Chicago. The work is still up for a while if you happen to be in the area. Amy's work has been exploring the complex web of the urban environment for quite some time. In her earliest pieces buildings still rested upon terra firma though often via rickety stilts. The stilts grew, swayed, tottered and finally collapsed leaving her buildings to fend for themselves in a white void. Now the buildings must rest upon other buildings (like the mythical turtles that were once thought to hold up the earth one imagines it's nothing but buildings all the way down) or they are bound together by wires, bridges, and brick walls. Trees, grass and rivers no longer exist upon native soil for all of that has vanished. The urban architecture itself provides the only haven for small green places. These are meditations on how cities exist, how they grow and evolve, becoming a life unto themselves until the landscape upon which they once stood is impossible to detect. It is beautiful, humorous, poignant work.
You can look through her work at the galleryy link above or at her website amycaseypainting.com