UNTITLED Art Miami Beach

My work is an attempt to confront the enormity of contemporary digital experience while asserting the humanness of painting. I design my work on the computer, and the translation from the ‘digital’ to the ‘real’ is paramount. Physicality, labor, attention, and process are important, as is the transcendent manifestation of image into object, embodiment and presence.

In computer programming, a loop is a sequence of instructions specified once and carried out multiple times — until a desired condition is met or, perhaps, indefinitely. I often make groups of paintings that are nearly identical to each other, with just a few variations: elements may be reversed, flipped, or rendered in different colors. Thus each work is part of the group, but also a stand-alone entity, asserting its identity through a combination of sameness and difference — much the way differentiation is expressed through permutations in DNA or computer code.

The paintings that comprise LOOP incorporate visual density and complexity, interlocking and interconnected forms, a tenuous sense of order, and spatial fluctuation. They are based on procedural variation within a strict set of parameters. It is my hope that, through optical, chromatic and perceptual assertions and shifts, they encompass a wide range of mood and atmosphere, and express a sense of vast potentiality.

— Amy Ellingson