The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
2024 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Amy Deal
ArtistDayton OH 45402 United States Cell Phone: 9373695218 Website: https://www.amydeal.com/
Bio
Amy Deal (b. 1966 Cranberry Prairie, OH) is a mixed media painter and visual designer. Her art has evolved over the last few years. She is known for her mural designs in Dayton, OH. Her largest mural is over 900 linear sq ft along the Great Miami River at Downtown Dayton’s Five River MetroParks RiverScape River Run. Amy has also worked with nonconventional materials to create commentaries on how consumerism is denigrating our environment. Her current series of works is intuitive, abstract expressionist paintings made with acrylic, oil, oil stick, and cold wax. This series focuses on her need to return to her childhood roots in rural Ohio and reflects the concept that ‘Art Heals.’
Amy received the Top 25 Artist Award in 2017 at our nation’s largest independently organized international art competition, ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She also received the Devos Place Convention Center Purchase Prize. Her mixed media large-scale artwork titled Blooming Flowers is in DeVos Place’s Permanent Collection of Art. Other Awards include the Material Exploration Award from Surface Design Journal’s Sixth Annual International Exhibition in Print: From Confrontation to Catharsis. She has also received Best In Show and the Juror Purchase Prize with Dayton Visual Art’s Center. Amy’s art and her process has been documented and featured on The Art Show, ThinkTV and was nominated for an Ohio Valley Regional Emmy Award in the category of Arts/Entertainment.
Amy’s artworks are in the collections of Dayton Children’s Hospital, Miami Valley Hospital | Premier Health, CARE House Children’s Advocacy Center, University of Dayton, CO Hatch Coworking Offices, Dayton’s Think TV corporate offices, PNC Arts Annex | Dayton Live, Dayton Visual Arts Center, Springfield Museum of Art, and University of Indiana.
Artist Statement
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton
The past six years have been difficult. I have lost many immediate family members.
I used to have the need for purpose and reason with everything I created. While working as an art director designing advertising campaigns and annual reports, the final result needed to convey a message and solve a problem visually. I no longer have intention with my creative results. Painting today is all about the process.
My brother died at the age of 50 of colorectal cancer. He left behind a wife and two young children. Soon followed by my father’s dementia and colon cancer diagnosis. He was so confused that recovery from surgery was beyond his ability. I watched him die. My husband was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer this past year. We had been in and out of the hospital for what seemed like forever. Both his parents passed away in this same time period. His mother’s battle was Alzheimer’s. I watched her die. His father’s lungs gave out due to working in a coal mine and years of smoking. I watched him die.
During all of this loss, I found painting a necessity. I found the process of painting enabled me to dream about imaginary walks with my dad through his fields of potatoes, corn, beans, and tomatoes. The colors of the fields and skies were different everyday depending on my state of mind. Color, gestural mark-making, long brush strokes, short brush strokes, repetitive shape making became my answer. Painting brought me back to my childhood of spending long days in nature and collecting materials to make art.
I am printing nature while adding my feelings and emotions. It’s therapy. It’s medicinal. It’s all about the process. Plants have been entering my dreams. Not just crops, but woods, grasslands, creeks, and ponds. I paint movements, patterns, textures, and lines created by nature.
My current need is to lose myself in art making. It enables me to stay near the people that are no longer physically here. They are in my art. Art heals.