Artist Statement
On practice, process, and the worlds I create.
Amaya’s Artist Statement
My paintings are born from the storm-lit skies and Atlantic weather of the Dingle Peninsula, where sea and sky often seem to become one continuous body. I paint expressive landscapes that hover between observation and dream: waves, cloudbanks, nocturnes, horizons, and the breathless pause before a storm breaks.
Weather is not only something I look at; it is something I intricately feel. Living with chronic illness has made my body unusually sensitive to changes in pressure, light, moisture, and temperature.
The atmosphere moves through me as much as around me. When I paint a storm, I often feel as if I am riding the weather from within a dream or a trance.
I am drawn to the sublime: to moments of awe that remind us of our smallness and our belonging in a vast world of indwelling spirits. My paintings hold the charged spaces between stillness and motion, the wave before it overtakes the shore, the sky before rain, the world suspended for one luminous second before everything changes.
Materials & Process
My process grew out of necessity. Unable to tolerate oil paints or solvents, I have pioneered a water-based mixed-media method using watercolor, gouache, and thickening mediums to create depth, body, and texture.
I work with cloth, knives, and stiff brushes, wiping paint in and out of the surface until the image begins to emerge physically, almost as if I am conjuring the weather onto the surface.
Texture, intuitive motion, restraint, and subtle color relationships are essential to how I create depth and atmosphere. The process is not linear; allowing the work to guide me as much as I guide it.