Amy Winstanley’s work merges observations and research with intuitive mark-making drawn from personal experience, emotion, and memory. She researches into eco-philosophy, feminist theory, indigenous thought and using the sensorium to experience the world differently—with a focus on our entanglement in, and estrangement from, the more-than-human world. In her process, she oscillates between spontaneous gestures and conscious painterly expressions. She creates space through layers of oil paint and builds shapes and colors that immerse the viewer into a place where there is suggestion of things and an undoing of depiction in a fluid way. Winstanley is interested in the everyday occurrences of birth, death, joy and sadness and uses paintings to think through personal experiences of love, loss, and her relationship to the other-than-human world. She is fascinated by the act of painting itself—the movement of the hand and paintbrush on canvas—the energy of creating something from nothing.
Amy Winstanley (b. 1983, Dumfries, UK) is based in Glasgow, UK. She received a BA (Hons) in Sculpture from the Edinburgh College of Art (2005) and an MA from the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam (2019). Recent solo exhibitions include: Slim Glimpses, Cample Line, Thornhill, UK (2023); Lost Hap, Margot Samel, New York, NY (2023); Moral Limb, Stallan-Brand, Glasgow, UK (2021); Grief Bruise, Lunchtime Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2021); Inscapes, AndCollective Gallery, Bridge of Allen, UK (2016); and Interconnections, Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries, UK (2015). Recent group exhibitions include: Strangers, Rongwrong, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2022);
tangible/intangible, The Haberdashery, Glasgow, UK (2022); Potluck, Gallery 17717, Seoul, South Korea (2021); To All Our Absent Dialogues, Warbling Collective, London, UK (2020); Surge, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2017); Fugue Lounge, Neverneverland, De Punt, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018); Surge, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2017); Every word left unspoken during the exhibition is the title, Neverneverland, De Punt, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2017); Spring Fling at Home, Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries, UK (2014); and Members Show, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2015). Winstanley was nominated for the Sluijter prize for painting 2019 (Netherlands), and has been the recipient of the Hope Scott Trust award (2014) and the Creative Scotland Visual Arts Award (2010 and 2014).
