‘Artists can, through their art, speak across boundaries of time and place.’
Amy Ordoveza works from her studio in Nova Scotia. She has exhibited internationally, her current body of work delves into themes of home, migration and impermanence. Amy's still life paintings of delicate folded paper are intricately detailed and simply rich in meaning.
Where is your current studio? What would be your dream studio?
My current studio is a room in the walkout-basement of my home. Though it is in a basement, it has good natural light and a view of the trees outside. It’s important for me to have a home studio because I have a young child; every minute of work-time counts. Having a studio at home means that I don’t lose any time to commuting and allows me to do a little more work after my son goes to bed. My dream studio would be a similar home studio, just a bit bigger, with space for more furniture to keep work and supplies well organized.
Do you prefer to work in silence or does certain music inspire you?
During the idea development, sketching, and composing phase of a project I prefer to work without listening to anything. I also find it helpful to be outside of my studio when I sketch, riding a train, or working in a library or another public place. I think that being in a new place helps me think of new ideas by removing me from any projects that I might already have underway at home. Working on an idea for a few minutes, having something interrupt my attention and then returning to my sketch is also helpful in the first phases of idea development.
During the completion phase of a project I sometimes listen to music, but more often listen to audiobooks and podcasts. Some of my favourite art podcasts are the Jealous Curator’s Art for Your Ears, John Dalton’s Gently Does It, and Art Grind Podcast.
Studio life can lead to isolation, how do you address this/ keep a balance?
I teach art part-time at a private school which provides a lot of human interaction. I live with my husband and son, so I don’t really feel very isolated. It is challenging to find time to socialize with other artists, so I try to attend gallery openings when I can.
How has your style evolved and what contributed to the changes?
There are some elements that haven’t changed since I did my first oil-paintings in high school and college. I’ve always been interested in still life, though I’ve also done landscape and figurative work, in creating a sense of volume and space, and in painting with a high level of detail. Other artists sometimes talk about wanting to loosen up their painting style, but I have no desire to loosen up. If anything, I might become more precise. What has changed over time is my ability to paint the way that I want to. My technique developed over a long period of time. I learned some important things about drawing from observation, applying paint and colour mixing in high school and in my BFA program, learned an effective approach to painting at the New York Academy of Art and the Art Students League, and continued to develop my approach to paint handling by looking closely at the surfaces of paintings in museums. My compositional choices have also evolved through looking at a lot of art and picking up on certain visual ideas that resonate with me. I am especially drawn to Northern Renaissance and seventeenth century Dutch paintings. Now that I am creating the objects that I paint in my still-lifes I am incorporating more imagination and abstraction and draw inspiration from sculpture, craft, and paintings in a wide range of styles.
Nature versus nurture- do you believe you have inherited abilities from creative parents, do you have creative siblings? Can you identify environmental factors or influences which led to your choices or directions?
My grandmother painted. She took some adult education painting classes and filled her home with still lifes, landscapes, and a few portraits. I don’t think she realized how good she was and I wonder what she could have done if she had pursued art even further. I remember drawing with her when I was small, and that she took me to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time when I was a teenager. In a way her house was like a museum; when I was a child the main floor was filled with her paintings and the basement was filled with the sculptures of Waylande Gregory, an American ceramic sculptor who worked in an art deco style. My grandmother’s best friend is the executor of his estate and stored a lot of the sculptures there. I do think that being around the artwork in my grandmother’s house so often when I was growing up had an influence on my development as an artist.
Both my parents have always been very supportive of my art. They signed me up for art classes when I was a kid, supported my education, and welcomed me to live with them while I attended graduate school at the New York Academy of Art. My mother has always enjoyed crafting. She did a lot of decorative painting when I was a child, taught me how to use acrylic paint and did a lot of other craft projects with me. Now she does papercrafts, which has certainly influenced my current body of work. My father is a musician and music teacher. He introduced me to the idea of becoming a virtuoso and taught me the importance of disciplined, intentional practice in music, which has certainly translated to my art practice. My brother is creative. He draws and does graphic design. What do you hope to convey through your work? I began my current body of work as I was in the process of immigrating from the United States to Canada. I wanted to paint the home that I was leaving behind in a way that showed how it existed in my memory and imagination. I recreated the townhouse community where I lived as a chain of paper houses, the fragility of the object evoking a sense of impermanence and my careful handling of the paint evoking a sense of significance. Since then the series has expanded to include representations of the plants and animals surrounding my former home in Virginia, my childhood home, and forms that surround me in my new home in Nova Scotia. I hope to convey the emotional impact of those places through abstraction and emphasis, through the careful selection of details. Follow Amy!