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DP Café - A weekly chat with DailyPainters.com artists
MEET THE ARTISTS
Introducing DP Café,
A weekly chat with DailyPainters.com artists
Every day, their creations are viewed and enjoyed by thousands of our email subscribers and web gallery visitors. Now, we are very pleased to offer a peek between the bristles as we profile 2 of the 165 international member artists of our juried online gallery each week, asking them questions that offer a glimpse into their varied lives and inspirations.
As different, unique, and complementary as blue-violet and yellow-orange on the color wheel, our painters come from all walks of life and all corners of the globe. They share a passion and talent for finding and expressing beauty through their art, and each offers his/her own unique approach and perspective.
We hope you’ll enjoy meeting and celebrating our artists, and welcome any feedback you’d like to share. Please visit www.DailyPainters.com to see our artists, unveiled.
This week in the DP Café:
A Chat with artist Amy Hautman
How would you describe your painting style?
My paintings are representational oils and watercolors with a whimsical twist. I take fragile details of nature and paint them oversized- exaggerating their details and exploring their colors and forms. My aim is not realism, but to describe something emotional that goes beyond the subject.
Do you come from a painting family, or did you pick it up on your own?
My mother is a painter and all of her seven children took to art immediately. Art was always important in the Hautman household. As adults I, and three of my brothers, make a living as professional artists. My mother still paints at 86 and still serves as a wise critic to all of us. Today we recognize the benefit of her expert critiques, which we didn’t always appreciate as kids.
For how long have you been painting daily?
I have always been committed to making art. Painting has been my career for 30 years and I declared myself a “daily painter” when I started blogging in 2008.
Do you complete a painting every day?
Some days I paint all day and finish nothing. Other days, things come together beautifully and I complete two or three pieces. I often go back and rework paintings. I think a serious artist can always find a way to improve upon what he or she has done. As many artists would say, "It’s never done until it is sold".
What's your typical day like?
Most mornings I make coffee and go directly to the studio, usually excited about the piece I was working on the night before. I often paint in my dreams and wake up with fresh ideas. A few hours later, the phone rings or something reminds me that I haven’t yet dressed or had breakfast. The rest of the day I am in and out of the studio, but if I am not in the garden or the kitchen or spending time with my family and friends I am painting. My studio is my sanctuary.
What have you had the most fun painting?
I have had the most fun lately painting chickens. We have Polish hens that are wild looking and have inspired a whole collection of oil paintings celebrating them. They make me laugh, and people viewing them often have the same reaction. When art is fun, it adds a whole new dimension for opening the soul.
How would you like to be remembered? Preferably as someone who is still alive, but after I’m gone I would like to be known as someone who was able to listen to her heart and live and work from an honest, true, loving place.
What is one thing about you that few people know?
Few people know that I would rather paint than almost anything else. It’s not the kind of thing you say to your friend. “You know, I enjoy your company but... I’d rather be painting chickens.”
If there was a movie made about your life, would it be a comedy or a drama?
I am married to a musician and standup comedian, and humor has gotten us through thick and thin. So a movie about my life would have to be a comedy. If it wasn’t funny, I wouldn’t want to sit through it.
See all of Amy Hautman's work at: http://dailypainters.com/artists/artist_gallery/1561/Amy-Hautman
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Amy Hautman was born in
1957 in Berkeley, California and grew up in Minnesota. She developed her love of art at a very early age. Her mother, an
artist, provided a fertile atmosphere of creativity for Amy and her six siblings. Although the family lived simply, there
was always a bounty of art supplies around and dozens of little hands that couldn't resist them. Four of the Hautman siblings
have become recognized artists. Hautman earned her degree from the University of Minnesota where
she studied Studio Arts, and Art History. She spent time teaching art while she pursued her interest in abstract painting.
These early works are primarily large, bold stroked acrylics on canvas. In 1980 she began working in the watercolor medium, preferring the spontaneity and
immediate results of watercolor. These explorations in line, form and color captured the beauty of the unexpected and offered
a new way of rendering visual elements. The brilliantly colored abstracts soon became much larger and took on interesting
landscape qualities. Eventually,
Hautman brought the rich colors and textures from previous work and translated them into recognizable subjects. The forms,
often taken from actual flora, were enlarged and exaggerated coming alive with movement and color. Organic forms from nature
have always been the basic inspiration for Hautman’s later work, but at times she has incorporated doorways or other
architectural elements introducing hard lines to the compositions. Fine technical mastery is evident in every brushstroke of Hautman’s paintings.
With large scale depictions of flowers, enticing doorways and dramatic landscapes, she embraces the refreshing, fluid characteristics
of watercolor. Her spontaneous style offers a fresh interpretation of familiar subjects. From 1983 to 1995 Hautman owned and operated a Bloomington, Minnesota
art gallery where she represented numerous contemporary artists and watched the popularity of her own work flourish. Her paintings
are now included in hundreds of public and private collections worldwide. Hautman lives with her husband, musician, Rog Bates, and their two children in North
Carolina where she combines her talent for painting with her love of gardening, always ready to capture the latest blossom. |
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Want to know more about the Hautman family?
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Another of Amy's brothers, Pete, is the author of many well received young adult novels, one of which, "Godless",
won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Pete's newest book, HOW TO STEAL A CAR came out in September
2009. You can see him in a video!
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