About ME
The Art Gallery of Christopher Amend
My Background
At six years old, I discovered that I had a knack for drawing. Nearly seven decades later, I am still learning how. I studied art at the University of Wyoming, earning a BFA and an MFA in Art. I taught art for more than thirty years. At one time or another, I taught every level from kindergarten to college, all the time while pursuing my own creative work as an artist, producing and exhibiting as widely as I could manage. In 2007, I left full-time teaching, and since then have worked full-time at my own art. Although I seldom teach these days, I find that I still find art and teaching inextricably intertwined in my awareness, as each demands the same daily confrontation with such questions as: “What is Art, anyway?”, and “What does it mean to be an Artist?”.
About My Work
I am a storyteller at heart. I work with a variety of materials and stylistic conventions, but however ‘realistic” or “stylized” the images are, to me they are all of one thread. They are the visible tracks of the workings of my mind. The stylistic approach, and the materials used, vary with the nature and direction of the idea. Always, though, however far my imagery may stray from “realistic” rendering, it is always firmly rooted in the discipline and practice of drawing.For me, art is about finding and assigning meaning to our experience. The images in these galleries are visual expressions of my musings about such questions as “Who are we?” “Where do we come from?”, and “Where are we going?”. Each image is an attempt to communicate a thought, through the language of visual metaphor. As artists, we send our individually eccentric visions out into the world, hoping that others will find resonant meaning in them.
